2020 Compliance Report

I. Senior Agency Official for Plain Writing

Mark McHale, Associate Administrator, 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)
  • Playbooks
  • Newsletters

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 65 members.
  • Feature articles on GSA InSite
  • Mandatory online training class on Online University

IV. Agency provided the following training sessions:

  • 1/17/20 - CXO group
  • 3/5/20 - RECT Team
  • 4/29/20 - CSE Staff
  • 10/29/20 APAC PL Training OATS
  • 4/29/20 - CSE Staff
  • 8/11/20 - Digital Gov - 634 attendees
  • 9/10/20 - Digital Gov 565 attendees
  • 10/20 Summit - two-day virtual summit with 1,816 attendees
  • Office Hours
    • 1/30/20
    • 2/27/20
    • 3/26/20
    • 4/16/20

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