June 21, 1999

Mr. Morley Winograd
Senior Policy Advisor and Director of National
Partnership for Reinventing Government
Office of the Vice President
276 Old Executive Office Building
Washington, DC 20501

Dear Mr. Morley:

In response to the Vice President's memorandum of July 28, 1998, concerning “Implementing the Presidential Memorandum on Plain Language” and the guidance attached to his memorandum, this is to formally advise you that I am the Department of Transportation's designated senior official responsible for implementing the President's memorandum and representing us on the Plain Language Action Network. We advised staff for the National Partnership for Reinventing Government of my designation earlier. For day-to-day contacts, we have designated our Assistant General Counsel for Regulation and Enforcement, Neil Eisner, to oversee the plain language requirements concerning rulemaking documents and the Executive Secretary, Jamie Williams, to oversee non-rulemaking documents. Mr. Eisner can be reached on 202-366-4723 and Ms. Williams can be reached on 202-366-4277.

I have also enclosed a copy of our Plain Language Action Plan in response to the instructions contained in the guidance attached to the Vice President's memorandum.

If you have any questions concerning any of this, please do not hesitate to call me on 202-366-4713.

Sincerely,

Nancy E. McFadden

Enclosure

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
PLAIN LANGUAGE ACTION PLAN

Communicating the President's Expectations to Employees

Send Secretarial memorandum to Secretarial Officers and Heads of Operating Administrations advising them of:

• The President's directive and the Vice President's guidance
• The Department of Transportation's (DOT's) senior official responsible for implementation of the President's directive and the regulatory and non-regulatory document contacts
• DOT's Plain Language Action Plan
• The application of the Plan to all DOT documents
• The need to notify all employees of their responsibilities
• The need to identify operating administration contacts to represent the agencies on DOT's plain language committee
• The need to prepare action plans within each operating administration to implement the President's directive
• The importance of a strong commitment from them

Create a plain language intranet site for use by DOT employees; place the following documents on the site:

• The President's directive
• The Vice President's guidance
• The Secretary's memorandum
• DOT's Plain Language Action Plan

Have regular meetings/conference calls with those responsible for implementing the initiative to ensure they understand their responsibilities and that they are taking appropriate steps

Equipping Staff With Needed Tools

• Conduct plain language training
• Provide plain language resource material, including guidance and the
• names of trainers
• Create hypertext links on DOT's intranet site to plain language resources
• As appropriate, develop or change existing DOT writing guidance
• Develop processes for obtaining customer feedback on generic as well as document specific problems
• Develop good DOT examples of “before” and “after” documents to illustrate how to write in plain language and to demonstrate its advantages
• Work with the Federal Register, as necessary, to develop improved methods for presenting information

Meeting the Deadlines in the Memo

• Identify non rulemaking documents that need to be written in plain language beginning in October 1998
• Ask responsible offices to identify by January 1, 1999, non-rulemaking documents written before October 1998 that need to be rewritten before January 1, 2002
• By January 1, 1999, use plain language in all rulemaking documents
• In October 1998 Regulatory Agenda, provide schedule for reviewing existing rules to determine which need to be rewritten in plain language; ask for public comment concerning existing and proposed rules that need to be rewritten in this and subsequent agendas
• Immediately begin using a variety of methods for obtaining customer feedback on whether we have achieved our plain language objectives in our documents; this could include raising the issue at meetings with regulated entities or seeking comment on a specific documents

Sustaining Change Over the Long Term

• Ensure strong commitment from DOT leadership, including asking them to satisfy themselves that their agency's documents are well-written
• Add language to DOT's Strategic Plan and appropriate individual performance agreements to reflect the need to implement plain language
• Require the senior DOT official responsible for implementing plain language to meet on a regular basis with DOT-wide contacts to review DOT'simplementation and ensure necessary follow up; the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary will also be briefed periodically on compliance
• Make plain language a part of the review process for regulatory and non-regulatory documents
• Periodically review with enforcement/compliance, regulatory and other personnel various indicators of success or failure, such as requests for interpretation, public comment on rulemakings or other documents, compliance and enforcement activities, and general customer feedback; determine whether they indicate problems or success and implement appropriate changes