2018 compliance report

I. Senior agency official for plain writing

Mark McHale, Associate Administrator for Office of Strategic Communications

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
• Great Government through Technology blog
• GSA.gov webpages
• Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) letters to small business
• Multiple Award Schedules (MAS) web pages
• 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
• articles on ITC Connect
• articles on GSA InSite

IV. Agency provided the following training sessions:

• 2/20 PL basics class - 8 people
• 3/1 FAS PL basics class - 27 people
• 3/28 Region 4 (Atlanta) PL basics class - 30 people
• 6/21 Office of Personnel Management - 10 people
• 8/1 Personal Property Management  PL basics people - 13 people
• 8/23 - PL basics open to all government through DGU - 20 people
• 11/8 - FAS QP PL basics class - 40 people
• 11/13 LITE PL basics class - 26 people
• 12/13 LITE PL basics class - 7 people
• 38 new hires took the online course at GSA Online University
• Content Management Platform (CMP) Plain Language course:
  • 5/29 - 43 AM session, 37 PM
  • 5/30 - 45 AM session, 37 PM
  • 7/31 - 33
  • 8/1 -  31
  • 8/2 - 31
     

Summit

7/20 - 95 in-person attendees to first-ever federal PL summit. Over 280 people attended via streaming video.

Office Hours

• 1/11/18
• 3/20/18
• 3/28/18

Briefings

• 5/17/18 Federal Asian Pacific American Council
• 6/13/18 Defense Threat Reduction Agency

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 2018, no one contacted us asking to clarify any GSA.gov page. We did get spam.