Plain Writing Act 


Compliance Report
 

April 2012
 
I. Senior OPM Officials for Plain Writing

Our senior officials for plain writing are:

 Richard Lowe, Director of the Executive Secretariat and Ombudsman

 Rosemary Williams, Director of Communications and Public Liaison

 Matthew Perry, Chief Information Officer

The best way to contact them is through our open government blog.

II. Communications

We have made the following changes to our communications:

Table 1: Changes in Communications

Communication/Venue Intended Audience What Has Changed

Web site, opm.gov

relaunch scheduled for 

this fiscal year

All stakeholders, 

internal and external

(more than 10 million 

users per year)

We are reducing the number of pages from more 

than 38,000 to fewer than 7,000, making it easier to 

find and use information on our site. Taking this step 

first will facilitate efforts to revise existing 

documents

Frequently asked 

questions (FAQs) site

Primarily members of 

the public (more than 

2 million users per 

year)

This tool provides answers to common questions in 

accessible language. We ask users, “did this answer 

your question?” and are using the results to refine 

our language

Documents cleared for 

posting to our website

All stakeholders, 

internal and external

(more than 1 million 

users per year)

We now require vetting packages to include fact 

sheets and FAQs in plain language. We release these 

aids with the vetted documents

Open government, 

diversity and inclusion, 

and other new 

strategies and plans

All stakeholders, 

internal and external

(40,000 users per 

year)

We have produced a number of new strategies, all 

with an eye to readability so the American people 

will better understand what we do and why we do it
U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Plain Writing Act Compliance Report, April 2012

Page 2 of 4

Communication/Venue Intended Audience What Has Changed

Open government 

action plans

OPM employees 

implement the action 

plans to better serve 

all our stakeholders

(number of users 

varies depending on 

the action plan)

These action plans provide specific instructions for 

implementing our open government strategies. 

Throughout these plans, we emphasize the 

importance of good communication. We also 

provide references to resources on oral and written 

communication skills

For the FAQs and new documents, we use a checklist we published as an appendix to our Plain Writing 

Plan as a writing aid.

As Table 1 makes clear, we have made plain language a priority for our internal and external 

communications. The following two sections address how we have reached out to and trained 

employees.

III. How We’ve Informed Our Staff of the Plain Writing Act’s Requirements

In July 2011, we released our Plain Writing Plan. At that time, OPM’s Director and the Director of the 

Executive Secretariat and Ombudsman sent messages to staff about our expectation that staff use plain 

language in their writing and about training opportunities. We have also:

 Posted an announcement on our open government blog for both staff and the public to see

 Used a town hall meeting as a platform to educate and encourage employees

 Sent a message reinforcing our commitment to plain writing to senior staff and briefed them

 Sent monthly writing tips to all staff

 Distributed articles on plain writing resources via two internal newsletters. These resources 

include training and books on writing in particular and clear communication more generally

We have pointed staff to our site, Plain Language at OPM, rather than duplicate efforts through a 

separate intranet site dedicated to plain writing or the larger concept of plain language.

IV. Training

We provided all staff with a link to online training provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

We encouraged all staff to take the training and required approximately 50 employees to take it.

Both our efforts to encourage plain writing and the changes to our website described in Table 1 share 

the larger concern of making pertinent information available in usable formats. That is, they are both 
U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Plain Writing Act Compliance Report, April 2012

Page 3 of 4

about effective communication, which includes but is not limited to plain writing. With that fact in mind, 

we have repeatedly encouraged employees to pursue further training through our internal training 

portal, which also provides access to books about effective communication. We have highlighted the 

following courses in communications to employees:

 Business Writing: Know Your Readers and Your Purpose

 Business Writing: How to Write Clearly and Concisely

 Business Writing: Editing and Proofreading

 Business Grammar: Parts of Speech

 Business Grammar: The Mechanics of Writing

 Business Grammar: Working with Words

 Using Email and Instant Messaging Effectively

Combined, these courses have had 186 enrolments as of April 11, 2012. To pass a course, an employee 

must enroll, take the course, and score between 70% and 100%. Of the 186 enrolments, 131 (70%) have 

already resulted in passed tests. For example, 26 employees enrolled in “Business Writing: How to Write 

Clearly and Concisely,” and 21 (81%) passed.

Retirement Services recently trained 25 employees in plain writing in 5 sessions. They conducted these 

sessions at our Washington, DC and Boyers, PA offices.

V. Ongoing Compliance and Sustaining Change

OPM’s senior officials for plain writing are responsible for monitoring compliance.

We ensure compliance largely through our vetting process, which we use for almost all communications 

that we post to our website. Our Communications and Public Liaison office reviews those 

communications and requires fact sheets and FAQs, as noted in Table 1. Furthermore, staff are expected 

to demonstrate oral and written communication skills in the course of their work more generally.

To gauge our success in making our writing easy for our stakeholders to understand, we use the answers 

to, “did this answer your question?” from the frequently asked questions site. We call this our 

usefulness or helpfulness survey and make editing the FAQs that the public rates low a priority.

For sustainability, we will run quarterly internal and external challenges to identify poorly written 

documents and improve them. We will begin these challenges approximately one month after the web 

site relaunch, since we already plan to remove many of the poorly written documents. We have also 

linked employees’ performance measures to key groups, including citizens. 
 U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Plain Writing Act Compliance Report, April 2012 

Page 4 of 4

VI. OPM’s Plain Language Website 

Our plain language site uses the term “plain language” rather than “plain writing” because oral 

communication is also important to us. The site provides tips, along with links to the Plain Writing Act, 

our Plain Writing Plan, our open government blog, the Plain Language Action and Information Network, 

and the NIH training mentioned above. Users can contact us through the open government blog. 

VII. Customer Satisfaction Evaluation after Experiencing Plain Writing 

Communications 

The answers to the FAQ usefulness survey are on a 5-point scale: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%. 

Program offices work to improve low scores. A low score can mean a number of things: (1) the 

algorithm1

provided an FAQ that was not pertinent to the user’s question, (2) the user is displeased with 

the answer, or, often, (3) the answer is appropriate but hard to understand. We have control over the 

first and third reasons. For the first, the FAQs are dynamic, meaning the algorithm is constantly 

improving. For the third, program offices use our plain writing checklist to make their questions and 

answers easier to understand. Keeping in mind that some low marks are unavoidable, we have set our 

target at 80%, which we plan to achieve in annual 10% increments at a minimum. Our fiscal year 2011 

baseline is 28%. 

 

1

 An algorithm is a set of steps and calculations. Computers use algorithms to arrive at search results. Finding 

keywords in documents is one way to search a database, but algorithms can be much more complex. For example, 

Google’s famously complex algorithm takes the popularity of sites and many other factors into account.
United StateS
 

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Executive Secretariat & Ombudsman
 

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Washington, DC 20415
 

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