General Services Administration 

Plain Writing Act Compliance Report 

April 30, 2013 

I.	 Senior Agency Official for Plain Writing: 

a.	 Name of Senior Agency Official responsible for Plain Writing 

Susan Brita, Deputy Administrator, susan.brita@gsa.gov 

b.	 Names of Plain Language coordinators within the agency 

Katherine Spivey, Plain Language Launcher, katherine.spivey@gsa.gov and 

plainlanguage@gsa.gov 

II. Explain what specific types of agency communications have you released by making 

them available in a format that is consistent with the Plain Writing guidelines. 

Type of communications of document or 

posting. List how this is made available to 

the public 

Who is the intended user and approximate 

number of potential users 

What has changed by using 

Plain Writing 

Ordering guide – posted on 

website 

Federal contracting officers Shorter paragraphs, more 

pronouns, clearer 

instructions 

Web pages on GSA.gov 2 million hits/month Shorter paragraphs, more 

pronouns, fewer acronyms 

nearly 1300 webpages for 

Answers.usa.gov 

1.5 million users able to use FAQ content 

across many different 

mediums: mobile, blogs, 

Facebook, Govdelivery 

alerts 

III.Inform agency staff of Plain Writing Act’s requirements: 

a. Information on the Act is posted on the agency intranet with shortcut. 

b.	 Published an article on the Act and its requirements in the internal agency news 

bulletin 
Created Plain Language Group on Salesforce Chatter (1/3/2012) @60 members 

c. Posters, signs, etc 

Started Chatter group (1/3/2012) 

Interview with Federal Computer Week (3/10/2012) 

IV. Training 

a. Agency provided the following trainings: 

Type of Training Number of employees trained Date 

In-house training – live 

(instructor trained by 

Plain Language Action 7 (Basics) 1/20/2012 

and Information 

Network) 

7 1/31/2012 

25 2/16/2012 

17 3/7/2012 

19 (Web Writing) 4/11/2012 

25 (PL in Action) 6/5/2012 

9 6/7/2012 

4 6/21/2012 

4 8/1/2012 

Webinars/Telepresence 10 

300 

8/9/2012 

10/31/2012 

Online training 112 GSA’s Online 

University 

Brownbags/Office 12 1/10/2012

Hours/Plainathons/chats 

5 4/3/2012 

3 4/12/12 

10 6/7/2012 
 

 

5 

6 

6/21/2012 

10/12/2012 

Briefings “Adapting Ordering 

Guides to Plain 

English” (10) 

2/1/2012 

V. Ongoing compliance/ sustaining change 

a. Name of agency contact for compliance issues: Susan Brita 

VI. Agency’s plain writing website 

a. Website address: http://www.gsa.gov/plainlanguage 

VII.	 Customer Satisfaction Evaluation after Experiencing Plain Writing 

Communications 

1.	 In July 2011, we created and posted an email address, plainlanguage@gsa.gov, 

published on our plain language page, www.gsa.gov/plainlanguage. In 2012, no 

one contacted us asking for clarification of any GSA.gov page. 

	 We published a feedback tool on GSA.gov’s top 20 pages that asked “Was 

this page clear?” and provided space for comments. We fed the votes and 

comments into a Google doc, which we shared with the top 20 pages’ 

owners. They review the comments and revise the pages in response to the 

comments. Most comments cover usability issues, not plain language. 

o Met 4/26/2012 to discuss results (10 participants) 

	 We expanded this feedback tool to the Integrated Technology Services 

pages. Of the @130 pages, we got this response to the question: Was this 

page clear? 

o	 2822 responses: 7/1/2012-12/31/2012: 

Yes – 989 (79.12 %) 

No - 239 (19.12 %) 

Erroneous: 22 (1.76%) 

Total: 1,250 

 Other GSA websites have replicated this pioneering effort.