this is Tammy white from the challenge.gov team here at GSA and
thanks for tuning into our webinar today's topic want to attract a wider
pool of participants make plain language work for you and our featured presenter
is Catherine Spivey Catherine coordinates
GSA's plain language program she also offers training courses for digital Deb
University and numerous federal agencies she's taught at local community colleges
and at the amphibious warfare school in Quantico
by day she manages web content on gsa.gov coordinates social media and
edits a great government through technology leadership blog but her role
as a communicator stands well beyond the walls of GSA and we were just pleased to
have her with us today thank you so much Tammy I like your intro a lot more than
mine so I may steal that in the future I like that you know plain language
communicator by day ninja at night or whatever I really appreciate the
opportunity to talk to the challenges community of practice because I was on
detail with the entity that was oxid when the challenges group got started
and so have the fondest memories of the ideals of your community and the people
who made it happen or and are making it happen so let me
give you just a brief picture of what I'm assuming is going to happen today I
have a very streamlined deck not my usual deck but one that sort of gives
you the basics but then I want to use most of the time on the example that I
was sent and you know hoping for some really good discussion on that so we'll
have a pause for questions after the deck before we move to the examples and
then I guess we'll just see how how it goes
talking about the examples because sometimes that's different from just
just presenting I have to show a lot more by thinking on that but so this is
sort of the basics of plain language yes this is me this is my email and my
Twitter feed and you know they also that I train for the plane Network more about
that later if you like and the big question I think that comes
up fast whenever I start talking about plain
language is what is that what is plain language it's a style of writing that
allows people to style of writing that allows readers and hearers people who
are listening to it to do three things quickly find what they need and this is
this is the need portion that's about is it are you writing for your reader what
does your reader need to know this is the hardest thing in the world because
people always want to write a narrative or a story or something and really
readers are looking for the bottom line so they need to be able to quickly find
what they need they need to be able to understand what they reader hear the
first time they read or hear it now you know having to reread something six
times 16 times you know that's not playing it really does have to be clear
and it has to be obvious and then they have to be able to use what they read or
hear to fulfill their needs that's the basic plain language definition and just
you know as a bonus plain language is international so you know countries all
over the world are working toward this
plain language governments all over the world are trying to do this so what it's
not and this this may come up it's not writing less precisely it's not dumbing
things down it's not a grammar or style guide issue it's not writing to a
certain grade level so that may reveal certain problems that you can then fix
and it's like being folksy and it's not leaving out necessary technical terms
but the biggest point is that you have to write for your audience and I assume
that in the challenge community you are writing for different audiences than
just you which makes your job a little bit more difficult so what do we think
it's going to do we think it's part of open government it reduces
questions from the public or your challenged community it reduces the
number of questions you get I mean who wants to get even five more emails or
phone calls a day I certainly don't it reduces the amount of resources you have
to spend on enforcing you know your instructions or getting things that are
filled with errors or mistakes and then you get to save time by not having to
address those errors with everyone who's trying to respond so I mean that's
that's the anticipated benefits the techniques and there's nothing
earth-shattering about any of these if you've taken any writing business
writing class you've probably seen these before
the most important I always see is reader centered organization you know
are you writing for your reader what he or she needs to know using design
features again we've all done this headers tables bullets using short
sentences and paragraphs government government writing is famous for the
wall of words as you'll see later using pronouns using pronouns really helps to
break down the barrier and to make it easier for people to understand who's
doing what using active voice not passive focusing
on verbs not nouns what can people do using consistent terms not jargon or
acronyms and this is very very difficult when you're writing for people outside
of your organization we're used to shortcuts we do shortcuts because they
make our lives simpler when you switch audiences however you can't guarantee
that your acronym is one they understand and focus on common everyday words where
you can well I know that that that can be difficult but these are the writing
techniques that lead to plain but I have to emphasize that it's your audience who
determines whether it's plain or not not you these are the techniques that make
it more likely but you can still you know manage to do I all
is filled that the first one reader centered organization is the most
important you can do everything else but if it's not focused on what your reader
needs then you know it's not plain so plain writing Act it does apply you know
all the new government documents must be written in plain language past the
deadline of October 13 2011 these are documents that are necessary to get
government benefits or services or for filing taxes documents that provide
information about federal benefits or services and documents that explain to
the public how to comply with a federal requirement so this would this applies
to paper and electronic whatever and it would apply to the challenged
competition if you are opening up to people outside your own organization so
just some information about playing there's final guidance on that from O&B
and plane was instrumental in helping out with some of that guidance plane
does two things it maintains the federal plain language guidelines which we can
send out to you afterwards and we do free half-day agency training plane is
of community we it's interagency volunteers from you know whatever agency
many state and locals have joined us as well for the purposes of you know sort
of sharing best practices and conveying information another thing to consider as
you're working with plain language and working with the public that is not your
own agency is executive order 13526
Ector a commercial sector is doing some really good things to deliver services
we should adopt those two so things that are enable people to deliver services
faster and more responsibly and reduce the need for customers to have questions
and complain you know so you're essentially
customer service you know whether it's mobile or you know online or whatever so
this is just a quick example of what the sort of thing I'm talking about the
reader similar organization this coastguard example starts with Coast
Guard conducted an investigation to determine what carbon monoxide detection
devices are available now that's not what the reader needs to know you know
that's that's not the point the point of this particular story of this example is
carbon monoxide kills we recommend that you use a detection device on your boat
here's some here's some devices you know and what you'll see a lot in this is
would you rather read this or that I just went to the eye doctor last week so
you know it's all about the this or that and getting slightly seasick but you
know we'll hope that won't happen for example and this is moving into the
moving into the design features when you see a giant thing like this I don't know
about you but my first reaction is to tell myself I need more caffeine to look
at this because it's very hard to read across it's very easy to miss things
unless you're reading with a straightedge and that's really hard to
do on a laptop it's not impossible but as a way of making it easier for the
reader you have this or you have that or you have that what ways can you make
material easier for people to scan because that's what they do keep things
short this you'll see this in the examples that we're going to go over it
really helps to give people what they call white space or blank space or what
I'm starting to think of as thinking space which is you've introduced a new
idea or you're talking about something complex let people you know absorb that
before they move on if you have these big wall of words that we see you know
people are struggling and they're like oh I can't remember point A to point B
but if you can push it to get you if you can pull it apart it's a little easier
to and and obviously if you have short
sentences you will have shorter paragraphs you know the same thing
applies to each you know limit your paragraph or your sentence to one
subject or one step' don't try and jam too much in it now if you're the kind of
person who really needs to calcio you want a number you want to know the
parameters of the box here you know you'll get better at eyeballing it but
you know paragraphs maybe five to seven lines on line 20 words per sentence you
know around that I swear I'm not going to come count your sentences or your
paragraphs but if you need if you need to eyeball it say you know am i allowing
people to sort of recover from the information I'm conveying you know or am
i you know shoving it them all at once and they're not making connections that
they may need to so for example another element of keeping things short is
literally the wall of words who wants to read this I feel that I should have a
standard five hundred dollars per page like this in unmarked non-sequential
bills just just to look at it because it doesn't have to be this difficult
you should always of course online you should link to material you don't copy
it because that's all you need going back to the eye doctor examples this or
that you know make it make it easier on your reader maybe your reader doesn't
have to read everything maybe you can show it off as a reference rather than
something else use pronouns your reader is a person you know pronouns will help
speak directly they make writing more relevant they require a great deal less
work and it gives you fewer words to have to count big thing coming up active
voice is clear concise and direct and is the basic framework of an English
sentence I'm only qualified to talk about English
you know other languages have different structures I'm always you know totally
cheerful that somebody's going to ask me about plain Scandinavian and I'm going
to be like I don't know but passive voice is characteristic of bureaucratese
because it hides the act door you know anyone who's doing the action now this
happens for a lot of reasons and I have to say that passive voice is grammatical
I'm not objecting on grammatical points but it really makes it difficult for
people to understand what's going on or even what they're supposed to do and
what we're doing is in this context we're doing transactional writing we
want somebody to do something as a result you know unless it comes covered
with the words fYI you know so so the famous most famous passive sentence is
mistakes were made who made them we don't know they just somehow got through
security went down your hallway and boom there was a mistake so what you'd want
to assign this is if it's known now the secretary the administrator the
department the team whatever you know made a mistake or whatever the thing was
there's an amusing way to find out whether a sentence is active or not by
adding by zombies for example if you can say mistakes were made by zombies
that means it's passive voice but if the sentence was the team made a mistake you
can't add by zombies and have it make any sense so there's a lot more about
passive voice but you know the meme is always very popular any anything to do
with zombies who knew that zombies and passive voice would would work but they
do so this is just a quick example of passive voice and we should I should
remind you that you will be getting the deck the transcript or the MV in the
audio from all of this so you can write everything down that I say but you don't
have to this is a quick example that I put
together for a you know one of these and it's the wall of words what can be
expected you know passive voice not very helpful
so that I broke down to this what you can expect these three things what you
still need to do does it up now not a great deal of editing just making it
scannable making people making it easier for people to anticipate what's going to
be happening there's also a lot of hidden verbs that people tend to like
you've seen these before magazines online you know lists substitute lists
maybe take to your refrigerator if you have someone like me in your office I
had a boss who loved came to the conclusion and wondered every time why I
made that concluded that's just saving you some space that's helping you keep
your subject in your verb close together tends to streamline your sentences this
is a secondary step nobody does plain language out of the box but this is a
quick step for you know streamlining your text as an editing step again limit
your jargon and acronyms use contractions and possessives you use
everyday words where you can watch between the two elements of jargon is it
necessary or are you just putting in two sounds more important you know some
adding legal terms will not make it a legal document you just saying that
seems to come up periodically so you know watch your level of jargon what you
watch what you're using use possesses and contractions if you can I do have to
warn you that if you're dealing with a group of non-native English speakers I
can't necessarily imagine the context but it might happen contractions do not
translate well so you know if this if material is destined for translation
contractions make that difficult I found that out but this helps again tighten it
it gets some prepositional phrases at way it keeps focus on the on the subject
on the noun so some more everyday words just you know make it make it a little
closer now these are the sorts of things that you can again make an editing step
to start smoothing out making your language a little bit more plain and
non-bureaucratic placing words carefully subjects and objects close to your verbs
that's easier if you have shorter sentences a little bit of grammar put
conditionals next to the words they modify and not elsewhere that can really
change the meeting don't misplace our dangled modifiers now and probably the
most important for you is put the exceptions and loan conditions after the
main clause not before in the middle so put the main thing and then any
exceptions after that because most of the people will probably not be using
the exception or the condition so that's that's the plain language basics are
there any quick questions about that before I move into the example well I
would like to say that that was so rich with information the concept of recovery
that you mentioned I'm recovering from all of that information it was great it
seems to me that passive voice seems to make what you're saying more about the
agency than it does about the the ask mm-hmm you know yes and I really like
your points about the legalese that people feel need to be incorporated in
in their content almost as though they're security and that they're as
stripping it out you know you can still be accurate you can still be factual
without using that language sure and it's a really good thing to think about
your audience I'm looking at some correspondence right now which and this
is sort of different level entirely it's plain you
know it checks all the boxes for playing but the tone is so off-putting I felt
really sorry for the people who were receiving it and you know sometimes you
have to sort of step back and say so what am I actually trying to do what
does what do I want to happen as a result of this you know and and
generally you don't want people to feel insulted you know there's very little
business case for them you fundamentally want them to do what you want and you
make that as obvious as possible let me ask you if there are any rules of thumb
when you're thinking about how you communicate with larger audiences now
I've heard people say I want to explain this to a family member in a way that
they'd understand and then I you know there are some people who take offense
to that so I kind of think if my cul-de-sac is having a cookout or I want
to be able to explain to the neighbor on this side and the neighbor on this side
they're both going to get it whether you know one is a brain surgeon and the
other is not you know what do you what do you think about that I I get caught
in that all the time because people ask questions about plain language and I
have to sort of figure out on the fly but you know generally I try and really
really really try to make it as least common denominator like I'll say
something like oh we're trying to make government language easier for people to
understand so they can get what they need you know bottom like that that's
really the bottom line and I found also that you know when I'm talking to about
them but when I'm talking about plain language to the top people in an agency
or a division or whatever the very top people get it because they have to do it
all the time you know it's the people sort of in the middle that don't get it
as much the new people don't know enough to use jargon and acronyms like that
just as a subway about this particular of interest to
science people Alan Alda the actor has started a center I don't remember the
location but started a center for science communication because he was
he's been interested in science for a very long time you know hosted the TV
show and was working with scientists and he had to tell someone once Congress
doesn't fund you because they don't know what you do right yeah and he just has a
new book on that if I understood you what I have this look on my face or so
rather long unwieldy title but I mean that's the essence people don't get
funded because other people don't know what they do right and they don't get
funded because what the wording around it is so complicated that nobody
understands it and assumes it's important you know you start making a
certain number of assumptions and and I think along the I think along those
lines too it's important to remember that when you're communicating with
folks in those leadership positions they don't have a lot of time right and they
have to be able to quickly see and digest that information you'll get a lot
further with that and to make the ask really clear not just background stuff
this is what I need you to do do you want to know why I have the best
conversation once with someone I said I need you to do this do you need to know
why and she said no like okay you know saved saved you know 10 minutes out of
my day let me ask you a question before we move on to more question before we
move on and I certainly encourage and invite the folks who are online to send
their questions in one of the things that we often see is that you know folks
will come to us they've been working on a challenge for a while it's been
through various stages of approval and they're very hesitant to change
something now when fresh I looks at it and can make suggestions that might make
that language appeal to a wider audience what you must get that all the time
so what are you how do you advise people who really could take advantage of some
of the things we've seen here today but are a little bit hesitant to make any
change because yeah I think that what I would
advise is getting it plainer earlier in the process that seems to help a lot and
sometimes you know obviously part of this is a trust building exercise if
you've worked with someone for a long time and they send you something here
and you do it you don't necessarily have to explain everything but it might be
worth setting down you know setting aside an hour or so in saying look this
is what you sent this these are the changes I made bless you truck changes
so beautiful these are the changes I made this is why I made them you know
and sometimes heaven knows that I've looked at material I've worked on two
months ago like oh shoot why didn't I do this you know you just get used to it
but the plainer you get it in the beginning I think the less wiggle room
is for people later on and also it's helpful to know that you can do this but
sometimes you give it to someone else and you say I only want you to check
this for accuracy you know because one of the things that really frustrates
people is sort of well extra editing you know one of one of the Marines I used to
teach the things he hated the most is when he would get what he called puppy
to small dog changes things that were necessarily you know helpful didn't
change the meaning didn't convey anything else and that's that's a
difficult difficult dance sometimes I mean you really you really have to lay
out you know sometimes having the checklist is very helpful to say this is
Justin for this this is what we want it to do this is how we're limiting our
material okay so you know sometimes making some of those decisions
beforehand will help so I'm going to get out of that into into another realm and
I'm just bringing the link that I was sent for challenge
gov the newest challenge the nutrient sensor action challenge so this is this
is all the information what I was given I put into a Word document and okay I
make a lot of disk question points I didn't quite realize that it was a live
challenge so obviously some of these can happen some of these can't but this was
my thinking this is the first edit I looked at the title and I thought I'm
not sure I get that but you know that's that's some tinkering I changed summary
to background and I looked at this if you look at the original which I totally
failed to bring up but if you look at the original one of the things is I
broke this into three small paragraphs now this is this was all one paragraph
and I thought you know that's just too much information you know I'm thinking
that I'm assuming that this is going to all agencies and maybe not everyone is
100% up on nutrient pollution you know people sometimes appreciate a reminder I
did some edits here you know just sort of trying to tighten the sentence I
might even make this sentence to nutrient pollution one of our mote more
widespread costly and challenging environmental problems and then maybe
start a new sentence it is caused by excess nitrogen and phosphorus in the
air and water and so you know then the next one is too much nitrogen and
phosphorus causes algae to grow faster than ecosystems can handle okay so so
far I'm following this pretty much I I may not be able to recognize nitrogen
and phosphorus but I've seen algae you know most people
so you know this growth causes major environmental damage as well as serious
health problems and people and animals now this is where I consider myself a
careful reader and I was editing this I was paying a little more attention than
usual but you have something in the first sentence which is you know excess
nitrogen and phosphorus in the air and water but you don't talk about air at
all and so I'm looking at this and I have to say I don't know who's who
created this I don't know the names you know I'm just looking at what was
submitted to me but in a way of sort of blocking out your argument or
restricting your argument or what you're proposing you know if you're not going
to talk about air maybe you want to take it out you know because you know I was
reading this and I kept thinking but what about the air what about the air
you know and it's you know it's just a way of when you're constructing
something like this how do you want to narrow it down
so people have no unanswered questions at the end you know this is this is like
when you're taking kids out and you say who wants ice cream
you don't say ice cream and hamburgers it's just one thing you know and you
know if they're trying to order a nice hamburger at cold stone then no they
can't have that so I mean it's setting out you know and deleting the possible
tangents that people can go off on you know what is going to lead them away
from our argument how can you keep them into what you're proposing so a little
bit more sentence editing here and I have to tell you I feel that a lot of
plain language or at least a lot of the plain language editing that I end up
doing is sentence level now I know that people scan but fundamentally they do
have to see the words you can't just say like
like I've seen there'll be a big bunch of content here you know there actually
has to be words somehow but so the first things that I did when I was looking at
this as I looked at can I break out these paragraphs in any way because
these are hard to read these are big concepts for me and how can I tighten
the sentences so the meaning is a little bit clearer now it's always possible
that I have changed the meaning somehow so someone who's a subject-matter expert
would have to look back and say yes or no but for in this third paragraph under
the former summary nutrient pollution and resulting ads app I don't I can
print out that al al j'l algal possibly possibly blooms I also take a toll on
the economy I wanted to make that a little more focused I wanted to say
costs billions that was later later on in that particular paragraph I wanted to
emphasize that take a toll on the economy could I don't know when I when I
pay a toll I think of you know a dime a quarter and maybe six dollars if I'm
going over the nice bridge but billions this is a problem it's costing billions
you know this is hurting industries and sectors that depend on clean water clean
water is an important thing federal state and local governments spend
billions of dollars per year to combat nutrient pollution or prevent its
effects okay so that's that's sort of setting the scene for that so the
challenge itself seems pretty straightforward you know it's based on
the 2014 thing here we go with an edit that I did instead of facilitate the
development of there's a couple of things going on you're you're making
your sentence longer you're stringing out your verb phrase you're making it
and less clear what's actually happening now I know that we use the word
facilitate in our sleep but you know maybe maybe it's not the most helpful
facilitate the development we help to help develop you know how do you feel
about leverage I only use that when I actually have a crowbar in my hands
yeah okay it is it is you know it is very difficult to unlock the meanings of
things that we're we're thinking in shortcuts we're thinking in code we can
almost sort of imagine exactly what we're trying to mean and it is really
hard to unlock that language sometimes that's why plain language can be very
useful what do you mean by something it's like huh I don't understand as well
as I thought I did or what am I trying to have happen as a result of using this
longer language so at any rate so put all that together the 2017 challenge the
only thing I did here is I made that bullets I unpacked that from a very long
sentence and I thought you know this is this is what I need you know - it's
showing three things the effective use of low-cost sensors fair enough
innovative partnerships to pilot the sensors and data management and it's
also showing how collected data and information can be used in state and
local decision-making now hmm I might even push back as we say and say what is
the difference between data and information is there a difference is
there a difference that where your audience will know now I'm looking at it
and thinking well maybe data is quantitative and maybe information is
like white papers or people's responses or whatever
but what is the difference this is you sort of have to enter into conversation
with a piece and say what what do you mean what do these words mean here why
are these words here sometimes overkill okay and then the closing paragraph
thereby proving successful strategies for incorporating nutrients sisters
sensors into existing water monitoring efforts now you know I'm not entirely
sure that I've seen that information before this is the benefit of having a
reader who absolutely knows nothing about this it's like oh is that what
you're doing because I'm not sure I saw that further up maybe you need to repeat
it you know the challenge can help State and I added local because local was
before you know in the channel into bullets for that state and local so I
added that can overcome okay this is another long verb phrase that I shut
down you know major barriers to taking action to prevent and reduce nutrient
pollution okay how about instead of taking action acting so I mean that's
the sort of thing you take as a secondary step you you figure out what
needs to be moved out okay now this I moved I reduce this it probably needs to
come back as a header the challenge itself
I put stage one and I put the deadlines up front more about that but challenge
stage one closes September 20 2017 if I'm reading that if this is something
that I have to fill out I want to know when it's due you know like if it's
tomorrow no way September 20th okay I could
probably do that so and this gets back to the formatting so you have that
highlighted in a different line German you can apply bold or a
headline to make it stand out and those features are available in the challenge
gov tool so yeah it's that sort of thing but you know stage one of the challenge
which closes and I repeated it teams will submit action plans describing this
is this again use at scene how I can reduce of the sensors I change
deployment and use of the sensors to sensor deployment and use and maybe
deployment and don't need to be in that sentence maybe it's just since or use
you know you really do have to look at this and say well what are we talking
about how they will meet the challenge goals and then you know the other things
looked okay but that's sort of you know the first pass and I know that I wasn't
looking at the whole thing you know this was the sort of the cold cold element
what I want to do now is look at the second version which I think I've got
because what I did there and I know that you're working with the template but I
thought maybe what your readers want what the challenge community wants is
what do I need to do you know what's the deadline what are you looking for do I
know anything about sorry nutrients nutrients in source well that might be
like one of those yes/no steps and I'm not going to read any more
maybe my entire office is closed for the month of September and Oh miracles can
happen and there's no way you can get this up beforehand maybe but I was
wondering how can we make this how can we give people the content they need
maybe they need to know the deadlines maybe they are only doing prizes over
$30,000 and if they you know if that's their criteria maybe that's something
they need to know maybe some are only I'm making this up but maybe some people
are only doing 100,000 new prizes and they're like oh okay we're not even
going to read the rest of it you know we can
meet the criteria this is mostly the same things the biggest change I had
from this point was switching from the challenge element here stage 1 and stage
2 in summary and backdrop background and then the challenge itself although
looking at this I was even thinking of moving this above the background so that
what you'd have is sort of the bare-bones
you you know like must be present to win when does it close what's the prize
money then the details of the challenge what are you what are you asking for
demonstration showing these two things fair enough and then the background at
the very bottom saying okay if you don't know what sensor nutrient sensors mean
this is the problem they're addressing let's back up and take a look at it yeah
so one of the things that I want to offer about this is you know we ask the
community to provide sample text and so this group a team at EPA thanks EPA
shoutout to EPA absolutely um sent their text in mm-hm
now the challenge has launched and I think they're interested in looking at
ways that they can improve the language but but to their credit one of the
things that they did was they really they're formatting on the live site they
use more visuals in the body of their text which doing would help yeah that'd
be great which I think helps no you know provides
some space and breaks up the text a little bit and that's not something a
lot of agencies do so to their credit I was really happy to see you know that
potential solvers informational webinar available so that I think really really
worked and and you know the tool does accommodate agencies that want to try
some of those things we're always happy to test some things out with our
customers so but I did want to give them a big shout out for like for that even
for just volunteering their text does an exam
you know great steps to the EPA team and you can take the rest of the day off
because I mean that was that was that was great and you know going from your
point tami about formatting because this is
very good this is prices you know and follow this
challenge you know if you want to keep up on this maybe they'll update handy
you never know here's the information about the prices so you could look at
that and you know about the challenge who's done it which category you know
all of the sort of formatting that you would need the submission dates you know
and as you said there was the visuals that break it up now I used to work on
the magazine and so I know about things like going to find justifying and rivers
and things like that but just saying you know it's it's very useful I think one
of the things that all challenges challenge people should take a look at
is how are you breaking up the information and that's simply because I
was just working with another agency last month who had not challenges but
award recommendations in a format that did not allow for paragraphing we am in
two things that you couldn't you had to be very very careful how you highlighted
information and the poor people who had to read them have had to work through
that as well well so our platform to a certain extent templatized some of the
information so you know your rules go into a separate tabs or if you keep
scrolling down this page how to enter is is part of the template and it happens
to show up on this page so you know it because it happens to show up on this
page instead of a separate tab it makes the text run a little bit longer down
the middle of the page and those are things that we hope we can address in
the future but but yeah yeah you know there's always there's always challenges
with format I mean anytime you start using a format or
template which is going to streamline and make a lot of things easier they're
going to be things that you lose with that it's like the difference between
having a content management system for a website and doing everything in straight
HTML yes you give up a lot of flexibility but you don't spend all of
your time doing div tags you know so it's bad yeah but this is this is a very
interesting thing what do you know about the challenges are running at any given
time how many challenges are open at any given time well I can tell you that
there are seven hundred eighty seven hundred eighty one challenges that have
run on the site and they all you know some of them run over many months or
some of them just a couple like that some of them their submission period is
much shorter so I mean I know that there was a you know in in one week we have a
challenge launch launching a challenge announcing winners so it varies like
it's like almost like a jar you know jobs posted you know how long you know
yeah when do you take them off and do you find do you find that you get
feedback from the community about certain challenges or is anyone keeping
track of how many people get questions on it I mean like we run a call center
for the pages I manage on G is my gov and I was just wondering what kind of
feedback well I can say that there are challenges that have run where we have
seen an incredible uptick in the number of questions that come from the public
who is interested in participating and I think that sometimes it comes down to
the instructions for what your agencies want folks to do and and how to use the
tool now there there there's one agency that recently ran a challenged USDA team
ran a verification response rate challenge and they took great pains to
do Kayle the submission process and even
included sample and even included sample solutions and I think we didn't see one
question come in and and I and I told them at the time we would highlight them
as the example to go to for how I describe what you want people to do what
people should do well they are great yeah that's another challenge that
closed about a month ago so the volume of questions that came in and obviously
you know what we also see that these questions tend to come in right up to
the submission deadline and so just a plug another reason why we ask agencies
to close their submissions during the day because you want to be able to
answer questions about content about the rules and about the functionality of the
site how they submit have you thought of having the USD c18 do a webinar on how
to do yeah how to set it up I want them to get through their awards and ala and
all that good stuff and then bring them in yes yes learn they actually did
something else that was really interesting with their challenge they
made all of their solutions public and encourage the community to share and
provide feedback with each other so we're going to hopefully you know invite
them to share a couple of things with us have you ever done any user testing on
challenge gov to see what kind of questions come up we have collected some
information from agencies I think we're looking at doing that again and we're
getting ready to enter usability testing through our GSA so the the the most
recent usability testing we did was on our tool kit which launched officially
in December of last year but we know that with more agencies using this
platform with each more agencies running more sophisticated crowd sourcing
competitions that it's really time to reevaluate
always yeah you know content needs to be looked
at periodically one of the other things I was going to mention before we go into
any questions that we have is for example I know that USDA has a very
strong plain language program and one of the options for people in the challenge
community is to go to your your plain language office I'm just going to go to
plain language gov if I can type it properly we have this is a non
comprehensive list but for example we've got a list of all of the plain language
coordinators senior officials and the page so if you're in any of these and
you can also just sort of you know I guess doodle around on your own website
to try and find it but see USDA dot-gov plain writing
I mean because they would be able to help you you know if you want more
information this is just just a sample but USDA you know the report card what
they do with the pledge how you can help people to contact USDA plain language
course you know your your agency probably has this too and I think we
have some USDA folks participating today so if they have anything that they want
to offer we encourage them to throw that into the chat box or to send a message
we'd love to to get their inputs there but I I loved the approach that they
took with that Mis recent challenge I really do you know and maybe maybe it's
worth saying that reducing the number of questions that you get about a piece is
a perfectly legitimate business goal you know you get to do that you get to frame
something so people have no questions and leave you alone you probably have
enough to do but you know this is this is one way of you know not having to
repeat the same question all the time making of questions do we have do we
have any we have pulsed the crowd we don't have any questions that have run
in yet but the EPA folks are very appreciative and and we did get a nod
from someone from USDA who is listening in so that's great can you I wonder if
you can go back to that topic of recovery that you mentioned earlier when
you're talking about Oh getting through the wall of words and but I assume that
there's some recovery even when the reading is a little bit easier to
process well think about it there's two elements
there's the reading and the understanding and the doing and you know
if you find it finding it difficult to read something then you're spending all
of your energies of understanding it and not necessarily for just to take as an
example maybe you're looking at one of these challenges and you're like what
what do they want why didn't they talk about air you know you have all these
car Asians and all of the unanswered
questions or the conflicting information or the confusing information is
preventing you from actually fulfilling the task now if you think about this
kind of think about this as USAJOBS gov if you're looking at a job posting and
you're trying to figure out the job posting and you're trying to figure out
what do I need do I need my transcripts or not you know what all what else going
on then you're not putting your energies
into actually thinking can I do this you know you're looking at here you're just
trying to break it down you can't actually act so that's sort of what I
mean by recovery time you know best-case scenario is you get a piece of
information you look at you say I know exactly what to do you know in best case
scenario this is these are the emails we get from that IT Help Desk you know you
have to reboot or you need to make an appointment and and you say I will go do
that thing right now you know the worst ones are you know number of years ago
when you get week I had a whole week of messages about the transit subsidy first
it was here's what you do and then they sent it out again the next day I'm sorry
for yesterday's message here's what you really do and then on Wednesday and by
that time it was just getting like a joke like do they know what we're
supposed to do does this apply to me do I have to do anything and you know I I
looked at it that next day and I thought I'm not going to try and figure this out
you know I'm going to go ask Gloria Gloria does this apply to me no great
well I don't have to do anything but not everyone has a Gloria in their office
well and I'd like to add I mean one of the things that I think about you know
we think about crisis communications and something that you might be able to
apply here is if somebody has seen a challenge and they've said oh I'm going
to come back to that and they come back closer to the deadline now they're
anxious yeah sighted and can I do me to a healthy oh it happens to be that much
easier for them to understand because now yes they're not processing is right
because they're stressed and and they're trying you know to hit that deadline
right you know which is exactly why why people make terrible mistakes but your
point about crisis communications was so timely a couple years ago there was a
very tragic plain-language example there were the wildfires in Australia and
there orders to evacuate were not particularly planed and people died you
know it was kaitos the top of my head but it was essentially weeping now might
be a really good idea except that in times of stress and this is some of the
really fascinating language research that goes on in times of stress your
ability to understand complex instructions drops yeah you know short
so one syllable words very easy to understand sequentially that's the whole
thing of what the kids drop what does it drop stop drop and roll yes thank you
yes I carry that one yeah yeah it's you have to make it simple and this is
another factor which may not apply quite so much to the challenges but it's the
audience as well there's a whole lot of physical conditions that make understand
not only understanding but just reading hypertension and diabetes effect web
eyesight hmm you know constant stress makes
information you know very difficult to process right you can't always say well
people with perfect eyesight are the ones who are going to be reading my
piece no you you can't guarantee that right you know tricky nobody said it was
going to be easy well we've got a couple minutes left I do want to mention that a
member of the USDA team says hey big thanks for reinforcing what our policy
team has been trying to convey to our customers I thought that I that it might
be a fun way to to wrap up just by looking at some of those other words
that we see that just make us do the big
exaggerated iral so we talked about we talked about facilitate we talked about
leverage what aren't what are some other phrases that you see and kind of you
know what are some that we should try to avoid I would say avoid be advised that
be advised that hmm that's passive voice you know the actor is I mean even
changing that to watch out for or do this or don't do this you know what or
whatever but be advised is really you know out there I mean it's got two
strikes against it it's the passive voice and you know it's kind of
wishy-washy it's pushing things into the middle of the sentence and the important
things in a sentence at the beginning and the end
you don't want important stuff in the middle my personal gripe is utilize it
has a it has a specific meaning it's just not a fancy synonym for use it
means you're adapting something for which it was not originally designed
it's like if I use a pen to write it's designed to be a writing implement so
I'm writing if I use it to poke your eye out I'm utilizing it because it's not
nice for that yeah well just how you feel after you see how many times
there's some things that I mean word confusion that kind of just bugs me I
don't know how much you'd see it in the in the challenge community but the
difference between disinterested and uninterested this is this is the drives
Katherine Spivey bunkers every time lists discreet with the two spellings
means two things eet means you know you're quiet you keep
things to yourself you don't reveal secrets ete just means separate you know
and unfortunately I was a proofreader for a long time so every time I see
those it's like I am the person who has run down to the
apartment parking lot with a sharpie to correct the parking signs yes I am that
person well we're just glad that that person was able to join us today and
share so much really helpful information I think we have a couple of things that
we know we want to follow up and send out to the community but again thank you
so much Catherine for coming these are off a little bit of knowledge on our
community who pleasure Oh before we go this just in leverage
utilized network path forward collaborative process yes yes yeah
all of those collaborative I always change that to work with nice yeah yeah
you don't want to be using all your brainpower on vocabulary really don't
but thank you so much what a great opportunity thank you so much
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