Background and Methodology In 2010, Congress passed the Plain Writing Act to ensure that people can understand the information they receive from federal agencies. Since 2012, the Center for Plain Language has issued a yearly report card evaluating how well agencies follow this law. This year, we evaluated 21 Executive Branch agencies, including all 15 […]
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2018 Report Card: Most-Visited Agency Webpages
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: How to Negotiate with a Debt Collector Department of Agriculture: Choose my plate Department of Commerce: National Weather Service Department of Defense: Tricare Department of Education: Student Loans Department of Energy: How do wind turbines work? Department of Health and Human Services: Lyme disease — Signs and Symptoms Department of Homeland […]
2018 Report Card
Who and what we graded in 2018 We evaluated 23 Executive Branch agencies, including all 15 cabinet-level departments, in terms of both writing and organizational compliance with the Plain Writing Act. This is the first time since 2015 we have evaluated organizational compliance (which covers internal staffing, communication, and training and which we had stopped […]
2017 Report Card
Documents graded This year, we made Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages and data infographics the focus of the review. CPoint Consulting oversaw the analysis and prepared the results. We asked each department to submit one FAQ page and one infographic. Dr. Chip Crane, the Center’s lead for the Federal Report Card, held a webinar with […]
2017 Report Card
Documents graded This year, we made Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages and data infographics the focus of the review. CPoint Consulting oversaw the analysis and prepared the results. We asked each department to submit one FAQ page and one infographic. Dr. Chip Crane, the Center’s lead for the Federal Report Card, held a webinar with […]
2015 Report Card
In 2015, we evaluated how effectively the U.S. federal government complied with the Plain Writing Act of 2010. We graded the web content of federal departments on two distinct criteria: Compliance Writing and Information Design Submissions Twenty-three federal departments submitted documents and webpages for review. We asked each department’s plain language representative to: Report information […]