2019 Compliance Report

I. Senior Agency Official for Plain Writing

Mark McHale, Associate Administrator for Office of Strategic Communications

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.

  • Press releases
  • GSA blog
  • Great Government through Technology blog
  • GSA.gov webpages
  • Insite (intranet)

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

  • Information on the Act is posted on InSite, the agency intranet, with shortcut.
  • Plain Language Group on Salesforce Chatter (formed 1/3/2012) over 70 members.
  • Feature articles on GSA InSite
  • Mandatory online training class on Online University

IV. Agency provided the following training sessions:

  • 11/8/18 - 49 FAS QP
  • 11/13/18 - 25 FAS QP
  • 12/6/18 - 16 FAS QP
  • 3/27/19 - 103 FAS Workforce Transformation
  • 4/4/19 - 57 FAS Workforce Transformation
  • 6/6/19 - 6 Privacy
  • 6/18/19 - 60 Personal Property Management sales managers
  • 7/17/19 - 6 Human Resources Management
  • 7/16/19 - 10 Personal Property Management
  • 7/24/19 - 26 Human Resources Management
  • 8/7/19 - 26 Human Resources Management
  • 8/13/19 and 8/15/19 - 53 Office of Strategic Communications
  • 8/14/19 - 46 Digital Gov class
  • 8/20/19 and 8/22/19 - 46 Office of Strategic Communications

* Summit

  • 7/20 - 82 in-person attendees to first-ever federal PL summit. Over 580 people attended virtually.

* Office Hours

  • 8/27/19
  • 8/29/19

V. Ongoing compliance/ sustaining change

Name of agency contact for compliance issues: Katherine Spivey

VI. Agency’s plain writing website

Website address: www.gsa.gov/plainlanguage

VII. Customer Satisfaction Evaluation after Experiencing Plain Writing Communications

In July 2011, we created and posted an email address, plainlanguage@gsa.gov, published on our plain language page, www.gsa.gov/plainlanguage. In 2019, no one contacted us asking to clarify any GSA.gov page. We did get spam.

Last Reviewed: 2023-03-09