Plain Language Act of 2008

[Anderson, Douglas W. [RO ANET]]

Hi Whitney, et al.,

Interesting idea. However, I found some of the text of the bill difficult to understand. Guess it was not aimed at the public? Or maybe not at those with only 20+ years of formal education? If not, how are those of us who are supposedly being represented to know whether to encourage the bill's enactment?

How is the following portion of the bill to be interpreted?

SEC. 4. RESPONSIBILITIES OF FEDERAL AGENCIES.

	•	(a) Requirement to Use Plain Language in New Documents- Within one year after the date of the enactment of this Act, each agency--

	•	(1) shall use plain language in any covered document of the agency issued or substantially revised after the date of the enactment of this Act;
	
	
If the day after the bill is enacted a document is issued or substantially revised in non-plain language (how is the substantiality of revision measured anyway?), sometime within the following 364 days must that document be re-rendered in plain language?

Could that be stated less ambiguously? 

How about the following guidance in the bill.

(b) Guidance- In implementing subsection (a), an agency may follow either the guidance of the Plain English Handbook, published by the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the Federal Plain Language Guidelines. If any agency has its own plain language guidance, the agency may use that guidance, as long as it is consistent with the Federal Plain Language Guidelines.


So an agency may apply either the SEC or the Fed Guidelines, but not cherrypick the best of each? Why would an agency have its own guidelines if they have to be consistent with the Fed Guidelines? Perhaps because they are more detailed yet consistent with the Fed? If so, adding this third option adds nothing meaningful to the bill, being a redundant option.

Perhaps it's another case of government telling us to do as they say, not as they do?

Interesting to note that regulations are not "covered documents" - we don't need to be able to understand those without hiring an attorney. I wonder which profession lobbied for that feature?

Thanks for the heads-up,
Doug Anderson
Mayo Clinic
Rochester, MN

Opinions expressed are necessarily mine, not necessarily those of the Mayo Foundation.


Original message:
Subject: Plain Language Act of 2008
From: "Whitney Quesenbery" <whitneyq at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2008 12:44:15 -0500


I just learned from the head of PLAIN that the  Plain Language Act of
2008 comes up consideration in the US House of Representatives on
Monday.

The goals of this are to make government less confusing and bring
greater efficiency and effectiveness to government operations and to
interaction with the people of the USA.

Learn more:
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/access/index.html#bills
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.03548:

If you support plain language in government, please email your local
members of the US House of Representative and ask them to vote for
passage of this landmark law. You may find the email address of your
representative at the following address:www.house.gov/writerep.

--
Whitney Quesenbery
www.wqusability.com

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.stc.org/pipermail/stcusesig_l/attachments/20080414/601b4255/attachment.html