Washington's Plain Language Revolution Arrives in a 400-Page Document Nobody Is Cleared to Read
The federal government has unveiled its most ambitious plain language initiative in a generation, produced in a format that requires three forms of ID, a legacy Java plugin, and the spiritual fortitude of a medieval monk. The guide to making government communication simpler is, by most accounts, the least accessible document the federal government has ever produced. Experts confirm this is progress.
The Framework, Explained (Briefly, Then Not)
The Plain Communication Access and Readability Enhancement Framework — known internally as P-CARE, and externally as nothing, because nobody outside the building has seen it — was released last Tuesday through the Office of Interagency Communicative Standards, a sub-body of the Bureau of Administrative Language Oversight, itself a division of the Department of Management Services' Directorate for Citizen-Facing Content Harmonization.
The document runs to 412 pages, not including appendices. The appendices run to 319 pages. There is a glossary. The glossary has a glossary.
According to the initiative's executive summary — located on page 47, after a foreword, a preface, an introductory note from a deputy undersecretary who has since retired, and a full-page diagram of the approval chain — the core mission of P-CARE is to ensure that all federal communications are written "at or below a tenth-grade reading level, in clear, jargon-free prose, accessible to any American regardless of educational background or prior familiarity with government processes."
The executive summary is written at a post-doctoral reading level and contains seventeen acronyms, four of which are defined in Appendix C, which is restricted.
Seventeen Approvals, Two Rebrands, and a Ceremony
P-CARE did not arrive overnight. The initiative was first proposed in 2019 under the working title "Clear Talk," which was rebranded in 2021 to "Accessible Federal Dialogue" following a trademark dispute with a dental hygiene startup. In 2022, it was rebranded again to its current name after a focus group of government employees found the word "dialogue" confusing.
Before publication, the framework passed through seventeen interdepartmental approval stages. These included a linguistic review, a legal review, a review of the legal review, a review to determine whether the review of the legal review was itself subject to legal review, and a six-month pause while two agencies disputed jurisdiction over the word "plain."
"We are enormously proud of the collaborative process that produced this framework," said Deputy Director of Communicative Standards Alignment Renee Aldgate, at a small internal ceremony held to mark the document's completion. The ceremony was not open to the press. A summary of the ceremony is available upon written request, subject to a 90-business-day processing window.
The renaming ceremony — held separately, for reasons that remain unclear — featured remarks from three officials and a commemorative plaque that misspelled "communication."
The Portal Problem
Citizens wishing to access P-CARE may do so through the Federal Document Access and Retrieval System, or FEDARS, which is accessible via a web portal last updated during the Obama administration. The portal requires users to first register with a username containing at least one capital letter, one number, one symbol not used in standard English punctuation, and "something memorable but not guessable, for security."
Upon registration, users must verify their identity using a government-issued ID, a secondary form of identification, and a third form described in the portal's instructions only as "a supporting document demonstrating residency or intent." What constitutes intent is not defined. The FAQ for the FAQ is currently unavailable.
The portal also requires Java Runtime Environment 6, a software package discontinued in 2013 and currently flagged as a security vulnerability by every major browser. The Office of Interagency Communicative Standards confirmed that an update is "in the pipeline," a phrase that, in federal usage, means approximately nothing.
For users who clear all registration hurdles, the document is available in a proprietary file format that requires a separate licensed reader. The reader is free. The license to use the reader is not.
"We designed the access process to be as streamlined as possible," Deputy Director Aldgate said in a written statement. "We recognize there may be some minor friction points."
The Plain Language Guide to the Plain Language Guide
Anticipating that some users might struggle with the 412-page framework, the Office of Interagency Communicative Standards commissioned a companion document: a plain language summary of P-CARE, intended to explain the plain language initiative in plain language.
That document, currently titled "P-CARE: A Clear Overview for General Audiences (Draft v. 4.2, Not for Distribution)," runs to 94 pages and is, according to Director Aldgate, "very nearly ready."
"We want to make sure the summary itself meets the accessibility standards outlined in the framework it's summarizing," she explained. "That requires the summary to go through the same seventeen-stage approval process as the original document. We expect it to be publicly available within 24 to 36 months, depending on interagency scheduling."
Asked whether there would be a plain language guide to the plain language guide to the plain language guide, Director Aldgate paused.
"That's not something we've ruled out," she said.
What Experts Say
Dr. Marcus Fell, a professor of public administration at George Washington University who has spent twelve years studying federal communication reform, said he first became aware of P-CARE after finding a reference to it in a footnote of an unrelated procurement document.
"The irony is structurally perfect," he said. "They have produced a monument to inaccessibility in order to mandate accessibility. It's the bureaucratic equivalent of writing 'BE BRIEF' in a very long memo."
Fell noted that P-CARE is the fourth major plain language initiative issued by the federal government since the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which itself required agencies to use plain language in their communications. Each subsequent initiative, he observed, has been longer, more complex, and less readable than the one before it.
"There is," he said, "a pattern here."
A Note on Next Steps
Agencies subject to P-CARE — which, per Appendix B (restricted), includes most of them — have eighteen months to bring their external communications into compliance. Compliance will be assessed by the Office of Interagency Communicative Standards using a rubric detailed in Appendix F.
Appendix F has not yet been written.
Deputy Director Aldgate confirmed that a working group has been formed to draft it. The working group's first meeting is scheduled for next spring, pending room availability and the resolution of a separate jurisdictional dispute over who owns the word "rubric."
In the meantime, agencies are encouraged to "use their best judgment."
This, at least, is written in plain language. It appears on page 388.
