U.S. General Services Administration
Plain Writing Act Compliance Report 2014
General Services Administration
Plain Writing Act Compliance Report
March 15, 2015
I. Senior Agency Official for Plain Writing:
Name of Senior Agency Official responsible for Plain Writing
Denise T. Roth, Deputy Administrator, denise.roth@gsa.gov
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.
- Press releases
- GSA blog
III. Inform agency staff of Plain Writing Act’s requirements:
- Information on the Act is posted on the agency intranet with shortcut.
- Plain Language Group on Salesforce Chatter (formed 1/3/2012) over 60 members.
- The Office of Communications and Marketing produced a plain language poster and an e-poster for our lobby monitors.
IV. Agency provided the following trainings:
Classes for the Office of Communication and Marketing: 1/8, 1/9, 1/16
Held quarterly office hours: 5/15, 7/31, 8/27
Held brownbag: 3/6
Digital Gov University (open to GSA and other federal agencies)
| Types of Training | # of Attendees | Date |
|---|---|---|
| in-person (basics) | 25 | 1/15 |
| webinar (web writing) | 557 | 2/26 |
| webinar (q/a) | 70 | 3/20 |
| in-person (basics) | 21 | 6/26 |
| in-person (basics) | 18 | 10/2 |
| webinar (web writing) | 616 | 10/28 |
Plain Language Basics:
- 638 new hires took the online course at Online University
- 6/2 class to the USA.gov content team
- 9/15 class to Office of Financial Policy and Operations on plain language
Briefings
- CIO’s Office, Jedi team
- Office of Administrative Services
- GSA, Northeast and Caribbean Region
Bootcamp/train-the-trainer classes for PLAIN: 1/19, 5/22, 9/18
V. Ongoing compliance/ sustaining change
Name of agency contact for compliance issues: Denise T. Roth
VI. Agency’s plain writing website
Website address: /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 2014, no one contacted us asking to clarify any GSA.gov page. We did get spam.