One year on – Plain Language Issues persist in Gov. websites despite Plain Writing Act - October 10th, 2011, by Fergal
TweetThis week marks the first anniversary of the US Plain Writing Act on October 13th. The act is all about clear and transparent communications. Given the anniversary, it’s useful to check how agency websites are complying.
So, last week, on October 3rd we scanned 31 federal agency websites with VisibleThread. The scans revealed some agencies doing really well, others remain challenged.
We plan to publish the full results soon. I wanted to share in this blog post some initial findings. These are items that caught our eye as we reviewed the scans. We hope these will be helpful for US federal agencies looking to comply with the Plain Writing act of 2010.
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How Plain Language helps you flush out risky IT docs. - August 23rd, 2011, by Fergal
TweetI have blogged recently about Plain Language here. This was in the context of poor quality RFP and bid response docs. The basic premise: if you apply some basic Plain Language checks to your writing, quality will increase.
In this post, I wanted to look at the IT space to see how we can improve documented requirements.
As background, people like Tom and Kai Gilb argue for improving IT requirements quality by rewriting them in a notation (Planguage) that is measurable and testable. This is really great if your team is able and willing to adopt that approach. In most business organisations however, it is a bridge too far. This is because BAs (Business Analysts) are not conditioned to translating informal English into mathematical statements.
Here I argue for a less radical and more digestible alternative; running a basic plain language check. This leads to dramatically improved requirements quality. More importantly, it is very workable in pretty much all organisations.
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Can Plain Language save cost? – You better believe it! - June 24th, 2011, by Fergal
TweetDid you know that ‘plain language’ is the law?
In October 2010, Barack Obama signed the ‘Plain Language’ bill. It mandated that all federal communications adhere to plain language principals. The implementation deadline is October 2011. By that date, all fed communications must be plain language compliant… better get our skates on!
For those new to the phrase; ‘Plain Language’ seeks to simplify written language; the result is clear and unambiguous communication. The net effect is easier to review text.
Why would the US government, the president no less, mandate such an esoteric thing as plain language?
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‘No Bad Language’ – Notes from Denver @ the APMP 2011 Annual Conference - June 20th, 2011, by Fergal
TweetSomewhat belatedly, I wanted to quickly blog on the APMP (www.APMP.org ) annual conference this year in Denver. This was our first time at the conference and it was really great to have the opportunity to exhibit and meet so many new friends.
The VisibleThread team was 3 strong; Jeff from sales, Evan from marketing and myself. The show provided Proposal Professionals a great opportunity to find out what industry colleagues are up to as well as network. Some quick stats from ourselves:
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