Fed Tech BISNOW: Say What?

From FED TECH BISNOW, November 9, 2011

VisibleThread CEO Fergal McGovern is trying to clean up government language. We’re not talkin’ 4-letter words (or else the FCC would have nothing to write on its site.) Fergal says there’s plenty of passive language and wordy sentences. His software firm analyzes document content and recently studied 100 pages belonging to 30 government sites for clarity and transparency. The top three best written websites are Bureau of Labor Statistics, CDC, and Census. The bottom three were the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., and the Federal Railroad Administration. (No Department of Education. Sorry, irony.)

The top 10 best sites.

Fergal and his Baltimore team studied several readability factors including the sentence length (over 25 is a no-no), clarity of consumer info, and how many words had a high number of syllables. VisibleThread was inspired to undertake the study based on the Plain Writing Act passed last year. Agencies had until last month to make their sites more readable by consumers. Fergal says he’s working with one particular agency to help get clearer content into agency websites.

From FED TECH BISNOW, November 9, 2011

VisibleThread for IT

2:48 minutes
This summary overview shows the business case for using VisibleThread for IT programs. It shows why up to 42% of IT project cost can be attributed to defective documentation and demonstrates how VisibleThread addresses this large business issue.

Red-flagging Bad Language

3:47 minutes
There are some words/phrases that you should avoid in a proposal. This short video shows how VisibleThread scans and red-flags 'bad language' in your RFP Responses.

Using Discovery to spot Gaps

2:28 minutes
Identification of key concepts in issued documents (RFP etc.) helps align the language of the response volumes. Discovery in VisibleThread can uncover mismatches and lack of alignment between issuer and response docs to support reviews and underpin a winning bid.

Validating Win Theme Language

4:43 minutes
Win themes articulate business differentiation. Too often, with multiple contributors and authors, it is hard to keep theme language consistent.

Here we see how VisibleThread validates response docs against win themes by:

A starter compliance matrix in 3 minutes

4:20 minutes
Proposal Managers have to manually scan issued documents or pdfs to spot requirements prefaced with 'shall', 'must' etc. and track them in spreadsheets. This demo shows an 'obligation scan' run against a draft RFP pdf. All instances of 'will', 'must', 'shall' are identified. It concludes by generating a first pass of an Excel Compliance Matrix.

Collaborations and Team Reviews with
Discussions

5:31 minutes
Managing inputs from multiple contributors and conducting efficient team reviews is critical to successful outcomes. This demo shows how VisibleThread supports collaboration using web based discussions.

Integrating with MS SharePoint

2:36 minutes
VisibleThread integrates with MS SharePoint using an intuitive import capability. This short demo shows how you can import an MS SharePoint document for analysis.

Plain Language Analysis

4:11 minutes
Plain Language Analysis drives clear documentation. This demo outlines how VisibleThread can identify long sentences, passive langauge and facilitate plain langauge audits.

Bid, No-bid Analysis

5:57 minutes
The right bid / no-bid decision when chasing Gov. business is key. Here we analyze a number solicitations in 5 minutes for fit.