Measuring progress

Currently, Washington’s 35 state agencies and boards are involved in hundreds of plain language projects at any given time. They range from efforts to simplify form letters and forms, to web pages, brochures and instructions. The goal is to make it easier for citizens and businesses to do business with the state. But Governor Gregoire’s Plain Talk initiative is also about making government more efficient and less expensive.

The initiative has great public support because, well, who can argue with such an effort? It just makes sense to reduce the citizen hassle of applying for a license or deciphering the instructions on a legal document. It’s also the right thing to do.

To drive this point home, we are looking for measurable results like cost and time savings that confirm our observation that plain language works.

Does Plain Talk work?

To start, we decided to select three promising Plain Talk projects and tell the ongoing story of our efforts to get the hard numbers on whether they’ve made the kind of “difference” we can quantify. So, in the coming months, we hope to have results – good or bad - to share with you.

Here are the three projects and their stories:

1. Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals
2. Department of Labor and Industries
3. Department of Social and Health Service

Get help measuring your project

• Brian Willett, Office of Financial Management, 360-902-0527

• Jeffrey Showman, Office of Financial Management, 360-902-7536

Performance Measurement Resources

• Performance Measurement: Guidelines, Myths and Examples

• Sample performance measures

• Selling the benefits of plain language
• Performance measures development worksheet
• Potential organizational measures
• Five easy pieces to performance measurement for training
• "Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please" by Joseph Kimble