CASE STUDY

Independent Commission
Against Corruption:

Leading by example

When the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) developed guidelines to help NSW public sector agencies to prevent corruption, they decided to write them in plain English.

"If we want people to implement our ideas, we can't expect them to wade through masses of difficult material," says Senior Corruption Prevention Officer Warwick Smith (above), who managed the project. "So we always use a plain English approach -- we've found it to be so successful we wouldn't go any other way."

The first step was asking the audience what they wanted. "We invited public sector agencies who had done corruption prevention work to chat with us about what would be most useful for them." This meant that the Practical Guide to Corruption Prevention -- a substantial loose-leaf document about four centimetres thick -- was developed from the user's point of view, rather than ICAC's.

Once the direction was set for the project, the next step was getting senior management's agreement. The team who approved the project and reviewed early drafts included key ICAC staff -- the Commissioner, the Director of Corruption Prevention and one of his staff, a lawyer, an investigator, and a member of the education section.

Getting help

The next step was to engage a plain English consultant. "While everyone in ICAC is educated and can write well, we realised that no-one here is skilled in plain English writing," explains Warwick. "We needed someone to get rid of all our jargon, so that the guidelines would be most useful for the people out there." Using a plain English consultant also allowed ICAC staff to concentrate on researching and gathering material, leaving the consultant to focus on the task of writing. "Instead of asking each person doing the research to write their own chapter, using one writer gave us consistency," he adds.

ICAC had done their groundwork thoroughly, consulting users and working out the precise content and structure of the guidelines. This meant that they could fully brief the consultant, Janice McLeod. Warwick stresses that it's important to let the consultant know exactly what you want them to do.

A meticulous review

The guidelines consist of 16 modules covering topics such as handling confidential information, conflict of interest, handling cash, travel payments, and how to report corrupt conduct to ICAC. As each set of modules was drafted they were reviewed by the project team, then passed to a review panel of staff drawn from four ICAC clients -- the NSW Department of Public Works and Services, the Sydney City Council, NSW TAFE and the NSW Department of Local Government.

Clearly, an agency like ICAC needs to ensure that it is fully accountable. "I went through every comment and made sure each one was considered," says Warwick. "We didn't disregard any comments, and we adopted all the suggestions that we could. If we didn't adopt a suggestion, I wrote a justification for our own accountability purposes. So for a year after the guidelines were released, someone could look back at the papers to see why their comments weren't included. I think that's important."

The entire project took about one year. Spending eight months on research and writing meant that the first draft was "about 80 per cent right", and that the review panel needed to see only one draft.

Getting clearance

Plain English projects may be compromised at the final clearance stage, as senior staff put back the jargon and bureaucratic language which was weeded out earlier. Luckily, that wasn't the case at ICAC.

"We decided to use a personal style in the guidelines, writing 'you' and 'your organisation'. We might write, for example, 'you need to change your travel policy'. Then someone within ICAC pointed out that, because the reader may not have the authority to change policy, we couldn't say 'you'. But we thought that writing directly to the reader would empower them to get the ball rolling."

"The commissioner didn't have that problem," continues Warwick. "He felt that, while the personal form of writing wouldn't be appropriate for all our documents, it was good for this type of work. He didn't incorporate any bureaucratic expressions in the final draft. In fact, he was extremely helpful in trying to make things more simple."

Good advice

And Warwick's advice for others embarking on a similar project? "You need to plan well. This means working out all the steps involved, and deciding who is going to do each of those steps, and when. Otherwise, the project can get derailed very quickly. And you need to get agreement to your project plan right at the start -- that's very important."

"You need to brief the plain English writer thoroughly. You also need to get the right people in the organisation to review material at an early stage, so you don't get too far down the track then have to start again."

Warwick says that while the project took a long time, the final product was worth it. "It was a successful project because it was given priority in this organisation. There was always pressure to get it done and encouragement to finish."

Plain English in practice Click on the image for an example (24k GIF) of the ICAC approach. Or a 129k pdf file to see more detail.

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