---
id: "workshop:understanding-identifying-and-addressing-administrative-burden"
type: "InnovateUS workshop"
title: "Understanding, Identifying, and Addressing Administrative Burden"
url: "https://innovate-us.org/understanding-identifying-and-addressing-administrative-burden"
date: "2025-03-04"
duration: "60 minutes"
language: "English"
instructors: ["Luke Hydrick","Lila Tublin"]
recording: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPx4sIKfyRQ"
transcript: "automatic, from the recording"
source: "InnovateUS (innovate-us.org)"
licence: "CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org"
---

# Understanding, Identifying, and Addressing Administrative Burden

InnovateUS workshop · 4 March 2025 · 60 minutes

Ever felt stuck navigating complex government forms, processes, or requirements? You’re not alone. Join our Administrative Burden Workshop, hosted by the Behavioral Insights Team, to explore how unnecessary administrative hurdles create barriers to accessing essential services—and how we can fix them. This interactive session will equip you with practical strategies to identify and reduce administrative burden, making services more efficient and accessible for both the public and frontline staff. Learn how plain language, process simplifications, and other tools can transform service delivery. Whether you're a policymaker, program manager, or service designer, this workshop will give you actionable tools to streamline operations and improve user experience.

## Learning goals

- Identify Administrative Burden – Recognize common forms of administrative burden, such as complex forms, lengthy processes, and confusing requirements, and understand their impact on public access to essential services

- Apply Simplification Strategies – Learn and apply key techniques, including plain language, process redesign, and behavioral insights, to reduce administrative barriers and improve service delivery

- Implement User-Centered Solutions – Develop actionable strategies to streamline operations and enhance the user experience, benefiting both the public and frontline staff in government programs

## Speakers

- **Luke Hydrick**, Senior Methods Advisor, BIT Americas
- **Lila Tublin**, Content Writer, BIT Americas

Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPx4sIKfyRQ

## Transcript

Automatic transcript of the recording: names and terms can be misheard, and the times can be a few seconds off. Each time links to that moment of the video. The transcript alone: https://innovate-us.org/understanding-identifying-and-addressing-administrative-burden.txt (plain text) and https://innovate-us.org/understanding-identifying-and-addressing-administrative-burden.json (every segment with its start and end second).

**Luke Hydrick**

[0:00](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=0) See the screen? Amazing. Thank you for that warm introduction. I haven't been so nicely introduced in a while, that felt good. We are here to talk about administrative burden, what it is, how to identify it, and how to address it. You already got a great introduction to who you are, but again, my name is Luke Heydrich, and we have Lila here as well. Just to give you a little bit of context for what we're going to talk about today, we just did introductions. I'm going to start off with a little bit about BIT, the behavioral insights theme, just so you know who we are and what our expertise is. The bulk of the presentation, we'll dive into what is administrative burden? Why is it important? A lot of our time will be spent on this item number four, which is how to identify administrative burden and talking about 10 different strategies that we have developed to reduce administrative burden. Then we're going to double click or deep dive into one of those strategies, which is how to use plain language, really across your work, but in the context of this presentation, how to use plain language to reduce administrative burden.

[1:25](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=85) Quickly, I just want to acknowledge that BIT developed this work in a partnership with the Veterans Health Administration at the VA. Thank you to them for letting us do this work and share it with you all. We're excited to do so. What we're hoping you're going to get out of today's session is these four things. We'll revisit this at the end of the presentation, but I want you to be able to learn today and go tell one of your coworkers what administrative burden is and why it's important, how to identify it, what are the steps you need to take as a team or as an individual to identify administrative burden in your work, what are 10 strategies and maybe the top three strategies that are relevant for you, and then how to use plain language. Really specifically, how do we take a piece of writing or communication and redesign it to use plain language best practices? That's what we're going to do. Who we are. BIT is a global leader in using behavioral science to design services, policies, products, generally interventions that improve people's lives. Our origin story is the original nudge unit in 2010, but now it's much bigger than that. You can see on this map in the darker blue where our offices are. Lila's coming out of the New York City office. I am based a little bit central in the U.S. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but we operate all over the world and we have a local staff presence throughout the Americas, parts of Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia, and we partner with all levels of government, federal, state, district, city. We work with non-profits and we also do a little bit of work

[3:30](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=210) with the private sector. What we do is typically a mixture of three things. Administrative burden is kind of depending on what you're talking about, overlapping these three areas, but we really focus a lot on behavioral science, so conducting research and designing interventions based on research about how humans behave and how they make decisions in the real world. We have a big focus and a lot of expertise in evaluation that could be causal evaluations like RCTs, but it could also be things like process evaluations, and we do capability building, so things like today so that other people, other experts like yourselves can use behavioral science and other types of knowledge like administrative burden in your work. That's all I'll say about us, just the real quick elevator pitch, and now let's get into it. So what is administrative burden?

[4:31](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=271) Really simply, administrative burden refers to the challenges that customers encounter while they're interacting with the service, process, product, communication, tool, policy, really anything. The really simple explanation is it's a challenge that someone encounters while they're trying to do something or use something. I think really important for us to know right at the top is that administrative burden can affect different types of people. So for government services, we can think about two types. Administrative burden can impact customers of a service, citizens or residents, but it can also impact public servants, and we'll talk a little bit more about that in a sec and how it could impact them, but really you can think about this as administrative burden being impacting front of house and back of house, like it can the recipients of something and the people who operationalize or make that service happen can impact both of those people. I want to go through some really specific examples of what administrative burden is just to bring it to life for you all. So it can really manifest itself in many different ways. Just to highlight some examples, a really common one that people focus on is administrative burden could be lengthy or complicated forms, instructions, or guidance that someone has to get through to complete a service. It could be something like documentation requirements involving feeds or other financial barriers to access. It could be something like eligibility requirements that are overly complex or difficult to understand or they're not well known in general. So these are nine different examples and just to try to

[6:40](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=400) make it really tangible for you. I'm curious if anybody wants to unmute or please jump into the chat if you and your work you encounter any examples like this in your world. So I'll just pause for about 30 to 60 seconds and see if anybody wants to share.

**Audience**

[7:11](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=431) Yeah, Julianne go for it. Yeah, I'm at a university and my work is with both with faculty, staff, and students. And because of the like size of our institution, very bureaucratic, very decentralized, and oftentimes people have to enter the same information over and over again to complete something. And they have to go to multiple departments to do so. Yeah, and I just, it's just very frustrating for folks. And then for folks who are outside of the university, our partners or other agencies trying to access things in the universities, the same way. Having to go through multiple people to get one thing done, to answer one question that they have

**Luke Hydrick**

[7:57](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=477) or to get something done. That's a great example, Julianne. Thank you for sharing that. Great. Just to move us along here, there will be, I'm going to ask you to share again. So stay tuned. Just want to dive in a little bit deeper into administrative burden. So we just talked about some specific examples, but we can break it down even further. And so, administrative burdens are typically categorized into three different types. And the academic literature often refers to these categories as costs. So we have learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs. It's really helpful to break administrative burden down like this, and we'll get into it a little bit more in a moment. But administrative burden is a very burdened down like this, and we'll get into it why when we're talking about the steps.

[9:01](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=541) But just to go through each one. So learning costs refer to effort that someone has to take to learn about the service, the product, the policy, learn who is eligible, learn about the nature of benefits, learn how to access whatever they're trying to access. So there's a whole category of actions here that someone needs to take to learn. And so those are called learning costs. Then as a second type of cost, we have compliance costs. And I think this is the most intuitive one. These are barriers that someone encounters and time and resources that they have to spend to be able to participate in that service. So Jillian, to your example, someone having to enter the same information in multiple times, that's a high compliance cost. It's a lot of effort that they have to take. And then the learning costs would be just learning where do they have to, what forms do they have to complete and where do they have to complete them. So they go hand in hand, but they're slightly different and can be helpful when thinking about how to address the problem.

[10:12](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=612) So learning costs and compliance costs. Then last we have psychological costs, which are extremely important and sometimes overlooked. So it's good to keep this in the mix. So psychological costs refer to stress or other negative emotions that result from dealing with this procedure to access something or just engaging in the service at all. So we want to pay attention to what this psychological state we cause in our customers or the end users. I want to mention here this kind of asterisk at the bottom and just recognize that the leading academics here, Donald Moynihan and Pamela Hurd, and you can see Hope Harvey here as well, but Moynihan and Hurd are really the leading researchers and they're a couple. And they have authored the book simply titled Administrative Burden. It's a really great resource. I encourage you all to check it out if you want to take a really deep dive into these three costs. It's a great resource. So I just want to give them some recognition there.

[11:21](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=681) And I also want to talk a little bit about the term sludge. If you've heard of that term, it's the opposite of nudge. So I just want to address it if anybody has any questions about that. Sludge as a concept is very related to administrative burden, but it is a distinct concept, especially if you start reading the academic literature about administrative burden. But burden is, let's say, the broadest term. It's kind of an umbrella term that focuses on the kind of experience of individuals and finding processes difficult. So going through these three different costs. Sludge specifically refers to unnecessary frictions within a process. Typically, that follows under compliance costs. So it's unnecessary effort that someone has to go through to complete a task. And so sludge is slightly more specific. Also, administrative burden historically has pertained to public policy, and sludge has been applied in the private sector as well as a public setting.

[12:38](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=758) If you have questions about that, we can talk about that at the end as well. And so just to kind of illustrate these three different types of costs, we have some customer examples and some public servant examples. So for customers, a compliance cost, for example, could be gathering all of the necessary documents to access a public service or meet eligibility requirements. And for a public servant, a learning cost could be struggling to navigate an internal process or, sorry, figure out what the process is. It could be struggling to understand how a policy has changed, or it could be learning who the right point of contact is for a specific issue. So there's many types of learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs that apply to customers and public servants. And I just want to pause here again for another discussion. If you want to unmute or put in the chat, go ahead and answer this question about what administrative burdens have you encountered in your job or even your personal life? If you just want to use a one, two, or three to indicate which one, or if you want to give a specific example, that'd be great

**Audience**

[13:56](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=836) too. Hi, this is Catherine. One of the first things that comes to mind is using the healthcare system. So for instance, when you go generally to the new doctor's office, they ask you to fill out a bunch of forms beforehand and then often ask you to fill out more on their portal. And then it seems that the doctors never read the information that you provide anyway. And so

**Luke Hydrick**

[14:34](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=874) you also have to provide it via word of mouth. Right. That's true. That's a really good example, Catherine. And I think that last point you mentioned could be kind of an overlooked psychological cost, which is that person, or we've all been through this, I'm sure, feels like it's a waste of time. We get frustrated. So there's costs of all three types in that example. Which is great. Thanks for putting some in the chat. These are great as well. Amazing. Seems like people are seeing these costs, all three types, in their work. Just to move us along, let's talk about why we think administrative burden is important. We have here kind of a, let's call it an impact flow chart for these two types of people.

[15:39](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=939) And so for customers, I think addressing administrative burden, or sorry, for customers, I think when they experience administrative burden, the impact is really intuitive. And so here you can see the VHA example when we were doing this work with them, which is that administrative burden can lead for beneficiaries, people who are eligible for benefits, to receive only partial benefits that they're entitled to. It could cause service delays. It could cause heightened stress, frustration, anxiety. And in some cases, we hope rare, not receiving benefits at all. Let's say if a key document is missed, or communication is messed up, or, you know, there's many examples. And so that's how customers are impacted. But I think it's important to take a look at the public servant side as well, which is administrative burdens, you know, basically can prevent employees from fulfilling their duties efficiently, effectively, without frustration.

[16:47](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1007) And let's connect that to that ultimately impacting customers, right? If public servants or employees can't do their job well, that will have a effect later on for customers. So we just want to draw that out here. And also highlight one question that we often get, which is can administrative burden be justified? And the resounding clear answer is yes, it absolutely can. But there is a real balance here that needs to be interrogated. So the balance is depending on what burden you're talking about, between something like program integrity, and reducing customers' administrative burden. And so I think the key thing for program designers, policy decision makers, to balance is that burdens can be necessary for preserving things like program integrity. But we cannot make access or participation too complicated or difficult for those who are eligible and deserving, of course. So there's a balance there.

[18:02](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1082) And so we just want to kind of highlight that, that there can be cases when making someone go through a burden is justified, like verifying that they are who they say they are. But we still need to eliminate as much burden as possible so that the experience of that service is a good one, is timely, and is effective. So there's no extremely clear rule here. But there are times when it can be justified. We just want to encourage people to interrogate that and make sure that the case is clear for an administrative burden, if it is decided to be kept. Great. So now let's dive into kind of the bulk of our presentation. I just want to say we're going to go through a lot of information in the next 10-ish slides. And so we're not going to be able to go through everything in detail. But I just want to reassure you all that you will have these slides after today's session. And you can read through in detail. There's a lot of great information here. So if I don't go through everything, just know that you'll have that opportunity. So I'm going to go through a little bit of just know that you'll have that opportunity. The first thing I want to talk about is the steps to identify and reduce administrative burden that we take and that we recommend people to take.

[19:28](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1168) So there's six steps here. Just go through each one. The first is to select a focus area. And when I say this, I mean to select a specific process, a specific service, a specific tool, even something like a specific form that you think needs improvement. I think a lot of you will kind of intuitively know what the issue areas are. And so pick that specific thing. The more specific, the better, because it will be easier to design a solution later on. The second is to identify your customer. And so when I say customer, I really mean the end user of that thing. So if it's a form, who specifically is going to be using that form? Or if it's on the public service side, if it's like an internal process or an internal tool, who is the specific user of that tool? And so, again, for step one and step two, just being setting those boundaries really specifically. Here's our focus area and here's our customer. And being very specific about that will help you in the subsequent steps.

[20:50](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1250) Step three is to develop a journey map. And so a journey map is a visualization of a customer's or end user's experience over time. And it defines steps or moments that are important. It defines key phases in a process. And it defines important kind of interaction points. The simplest way to think about that is you could write out a step-by-step list of everything that someone would need to do to complete the form. So, for example, for a customer form, it would be first, they need to be aware that they need to complete the form. They need to, step number two, they need to find the form. And you could probably break that down into many steps. Step three, they need to complete that form, which, again, could be broken down into many steps. Step four, they need to send that form wherever it needs to go with the right supporting information. And so, break down the use of that tool, product, service into as many specific steps as possible. The more specific, the better in general.

[22:17](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1337) So, this really provides the foundation for the next step, which is to identify burdens. So, now that you have a journey map, the reason we developed that is so that we can really specifically identify when a burden, administrative burden is happening. So, for each step, what we would want to do is kind of systematically look at that step and say, are there any learning costs happening in this step? Are there any compliance costs happening in this step? And are there any psychological costs that are happening in this step? So, I know it can be kind of a lot and maybe a little bit repetitive or redundant, but really going through each step in your journey map and identifying those three types of burdens within each step is really critical. And so, we do that throughout the journey.

[23:20](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1400) And then, once we have done that, we move on to step five, which is to prioritize the administrative burdens that we want to address. And so, typically, we'll use an impact and feasibility matrix to determine which burdens or which steps or step to tackle first. And so, the questions that we typically ask are in those two categories, impact considerations and feasibility considerations. So, in impact, we ask, would reducing this burden affect the overall customer experience? Would reducing this burden have ripple effects of positively impacting other parts of the journey? Is it, in other words, is it kind of a cornerstone or a really good leverage point to improve this tool or process? So, those are impact considerations. You'll get a variety of scores, some that are really high potential impact and some that are lower. And then, we look at feasibility considerations. And so, we ask, is this burden generated by one specific factor or is it generated by many broader conditions? And then, we also ask, are there policy considerations or resource constraints that are specific to this barrier?

[24:39](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1479) We're trying to get a sense for how easy or how difficult actually addressing this burden would be. And so, with those two sets of questions answered, we look for the high impact, high feasibility administrative burden. So, changing, addressing that burden would generate a lot of high impact and it's going to be really easy to do. Those are quick wins. Let's do those. Then, we would focus on high impact, low feasibility. So, things that are really impactful but are going to take more time or harder to change. And we can kind of go through and prioritize which administrative burdens issues we want to address first and kind of establish a pipeline of projects if you have that many burdens to address. Lastly, we develop a solution. And so, the rest of this presentation is going to focus on specific strategies to develop a solution. So, I'm going to dive into them now. So, we develop 10 strategies.

[25:54](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1554) They are in four categories here. We have two strategies and enable participation, three and facilitate progress, two and help with navigation, and three with focus on communication. Enable participation is really about streamlining customers' engagement by simplifying requirements and defaults. Facilitate progress aims to smooth out a customer's journey, reduce effort, provide clear instructions and preventing errors. Helping with navigation is aimed at assisting customers with navigating complex processes by signposting features and providing guidance. And focusing on communication aims to essentially enhance the content of the communication and its effectiveness. We're not we don't have time to go through all 10 of these. Again, you will have the slides after to take a deeper look. But we're going to talk about four in detail. One from each of these categories. And then you can take a look at others later. To start, we're going to look at strategy one. So, strategy one is to set intentional defaults. And so, we know that people often stick with their initial or predetermined options, even if better choices are available.

[27:29](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1649) A really kind of easy example of this that we all are familiar with is in your personal life, when you're purchasing something online and there's a box indicating that you want to receive newsletters and emails, even when you don't, it's pre-checked and you forget to unclick it. That's a default. And so, in government, what we can sometimes do is automatically enroll eligible individuals into beneficial programs or services that they're eligible for, just like pre-checking a box. And that can eliminate a lot of learning costs, a lot of compliance costs of needing to research and apply for a program, for example. And then on the right here, you'll see our suggestions for how to use default. So, automatic enrollment, like I just mentioned, is very effective. You can default to electronic communications in some cases. And then just really setting smart default options that align with your user's best interests while still allowing for opt-out. Defaults don't always have to be at the enrollment level. If you look at your program, you may see defaults that aren't so large. You can see on this next page, when you get the slides, we've listed on the right some solution prompts for you to take a look at. These are questions that we ask to you to kind of get ideas flowing. For example, if you already use defaults in some ways, it's easy for customers to change the default or make a decision that is different from the default option. So, prompts for you as you're looking for solutions to think about.

[29:21](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1761) So, I won't go through all of them, but they're there for you. Next, I want to talk about strategy four, which is to help prevent errors. So, we know that errors create delays. They create extra work for public servants, employees, for customers, everyone. It creates rework and delays on all sides. And so, while some mistakes are inevitable, we think that programs can also take steps to help customers take the right action. A really good example of this at the NIH is the assist system, which attempts to validate grant applications before submission to reduce... Use errors and streamline the process. Um, and so there are many ways that you can do this. A lot of them digital, but you can use pop-ups, warnings, banners to catch mistakes in real time. Say if a field on a form is, um, entered incorrectly. One that sometimes people don't think about is called a soft default.

[30:22](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1822) This is where you limit options. So instead of providing many, many options for someone to pick from that potentially could be incorrect for them, we limit options to reduce choice overload, decision fatigue, and suggest an option to them called a soft default. Um, you can also provide tips, uh, define jargon, uh, and make, uh, taking the correct action, the easiest choice. Again, you'll see some solution prompts on the right here. Like, um, are there ways that you can redesign your product to provide guidance, uh, for users within the product itself, rather than asking them to go somewhere else, uh, like an FAQ, uh, or help. Next up is strategy seven. Uh, this is a really important one, which is signposting and marking progress. Um, so providing various types of process guidance will help customers complete the actions that they need to take to stay on the right track.

[31:32](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1892) Um, and process guidance solutions can really reduce learning compliance and psychological costs because, uh, they can deliver information precisely when it is needed, uh, and most relevant. Um, so a good example, uh, which is commonly cited and I love it. And you see it a lot, you see it a lot of times in the private sector too, is the USPS package tracking. So it's a great model. 70% of people, uh, use this feature. Uh, and it really reduces a lot of the costs, the administrative burden costs that, um, could people could experience in the service. Um, and so ways you can guide users, you can use progress bars that show completion status or where they are on a journey, you can provide clear steps and reminders for required actions. Um, and you can, uh, display next steps, uh, and deadlines, uh, users are kept on track.

[32:37](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=1957) Again, you'll see some prompts on the right here for you to review and to use as an ideation tool. And then last we have focus on communicate or sorry, we have strategy nine, uh, which is in the focus on communication category, which is to make information easy to understand and actionable. Um, so using simple language and organizing information, it's intuitive. It clearly helps, uh, people, uh, understand what they're reading and acting on it. Providing checklists for required actions or documents can really streamline a process for a user and improve their ability to act quickly. Um, a really good example of this is a program of work at the USDOL, uh, which is working kind of through a lot of states to simplify forms and notices.

[33:39](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2019) Uh, using plain language with the goal of, um, leading to fewer, uh, calls to the call center, increasing application rates, increasing, increasing efficiency. Um, and the way that they do this and you can do this is to use plain language. And we're going to talk about that in detail, avoid jargon, complex terms, terms, breaking text into small, clear sections called chunking, uh, and providing checklists to highlight required steps. So we're going to go through this in detail, but just want to mention your solution prompts are here. And, and just want to pause. I know I went through that quickly because we have a lot to get through and we want to give you some really clear tips on plain language, but just a pause. I want to see if anybody can pop into the chat or unmute, um, and answer if any of these categories or strategies resonated with you and which ones resonated most.

[34:49](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2089) Thanks for chatting. And Bonnie, I'm glad to hear it's four. We're going to get into that in detail. Defaults navigation. Just to build on this discussion. I'm wondering if anybody in the chat can share if you've used any of these strategies in your work and if there were any results, oh, sorry, Melanie. I see you have your hand raised.

**Audience**

[35:19](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2119) I think you meant Melissa and that's me.

**Luke Hydrick**

[35:21](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2121) Oh, Melissa. Sorry.

**Audience**

[35:22](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2122) No worries. They start with the same three letters. Um, I would say that the biggest one we have is strategy four under two. Um, the errors, we see a lot of people coming through, uh, we have, we have an application for a registry and it's really hard. Um, people send the wrong ID, like they'll send expired IDs. And so that is like the biggest, I think, burden that we're trying to reduce as much as we can is like, do you have the right ID? Is it not expired? Is it, you know, current, did you, you know, that kind of thing and to try and decrease that psychological burden because people get so flustered when they think their credential is not right.

**Luke Hydrick**

[36:03](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2163) Yes. That's a great example. Thank you, Melissa. Great. I'm going to, um, move us along. Um, so that we have a little bit of time for questions. Uh, we want to focus on this plain language strategy. It's really all of strategy nine. Um, but really zooming into how do we use plain language and I will hand it to Lila to walk us through that.

**Lila Tublin**

[36:36](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2196) Yes. Thank you, Luke. And thank you everyone for participating in the chat. It's great to see that some of you are already using these strategies to reduce administrative burden. Um, so yeah, let's focus on words. Luke, could you please advance? Thank you. So, um, some of you may be familiar already with plain language and there's a definition over here on the left-hand side. Plain language is communication. Your audience can understand the first time they read or hear it. Um, so plain language can clearly help reduce administrative burdens by making things easier to understand, preventing errors, preventing calls for clarification and things like that. There are a lot of elements to plain language and from all of the, a lot of elements and resources to help you write in plain language. And from that, we've distilled down to the short checklist. So things like really focusing on your reader and organizing the content to answer the questions they'll have, communicate the information that they will critically need using second person, the word you and other pronouns to make you and other pronouns to make your writing more engaging and feel more personable, personal and relevant using active voice sentence structure versus passive, shortening your sentences and paragraphs using conversational words and using easy to follow design features like Luke mentioned in the previous section, but for today we'll be focusing on these three features and giving you tips on how to apply them.

[38:15](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2295) We can start with active voice, not passive. So here are two definitions of passive voice and active voice. So a sentence written in passive voice is when the actor comes after the action or when the actor is completely absent from the sentence versus active voice, when the actor comes before the action and active voice is usually the simplest sentence structure in English, at least, and it can help make information clearer to your reader while passive voice is a little more opaque because it kind of hides who is doing what and that can be okay sometimes, but if you want to make something crystal clear and super understandable to someone, active voice is the way to go. And we have an example to show you what this looks like. So on the left, there's an example of a sentence written in passive voice, household water, a household water lead test was conducted and lead was detected in the source of water.

[39:22](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2362) And an active version of that sentence could be, we found lead in your household water. And you'll see that certain words were highlighted and especially in the passive sentence. If you see words like was of like this to be versions of to be was, is, were, are, been and of, if you see that in a sentence, it could indicate that it's written passively and you can go back and make it active. So get rid of these if you can. And now we have a short activity. So please chat in. There's a sentence written in passive voice here. The aim of the program was to promote actions to increase hydration on a daily basis. Go ahead and chat in the text box or in your own text window, how you would make this passive voice active.

[40:29](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2429) Thank you so much, everyone. These are great edits. I'll just we'll just show the one one edit the program aimed to help people drink more water. So I saw very similar edits in the chat here. We've made the program the actor and aimed the verb and the sentence is just much more simpler and clearer this way. A small difference, but it really helps people. So that is strategy one. Next, we have short sentences and paragraphs and ways to do that. And we have a few things to think about and tips of how how to do this so you can shorten your paragraphs and sentences by finding the unnecessary words and cutting them. And this is super important when it comes to writing and editing, because the more you include in the notice, a letter, an email, a form, the less people retain.

[41:54](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2514) And this is really important for government because there's a lot of detail that you could give your colleagues or customers or what have you. But not all of it might be critical to include in the communication for what the person needs to do next. So to that point, really think about the musts of what the reader needs to focus on versus what might distract them and cut that, you know, cut that content or move it to an appendix or a footer where they could find it if they want to know more. And that helps keeps people's attention on the content that they will find most valuable and useful in navigating the service or the step or finding out if they're eligible, eligible for something or whatever it may be. And if it's helpful, a good average sentence length to go for is about 20 words or shorter. But that doesn't mean every sentence needs to be that length. But yes, so now is your practice time. So here is an example sentence.

[42:54](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2574) I won't read it out loud, but give it a read and try to shorten it and you can chat it in the chat here or in your own text box. These are beautiful edits, people. Thank you. Let's just go on and see one edit that we included in the presentation.

[43:57](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2637) So, yes, the state agency, if the agency finds that you received a payment that you weren't entitled to, you have to pay all of it back. So, yes. Think about what you can cut to focus the reader's attention on the musts, what they need to know. And our last feature that we'll talk about is my favorite. They're common everyday conversational words. And I feel like this is self-explanatory. This is a list of complex words and they're simpler, they're simplified twins. So as you're reading or writing and editing documents or communications and your default is to use one of the more official or complex or legal sounding words, but there's a simpler one that could communicate the same thing. Try going with a simpler one.

[45:00](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2700) Or if there's, if there is a mandatory, complex, or legal word that you have to use, try pairing it with, try defining it right away using simpler words so that the person you're writing to, your reader, can learn what it means the next time they encounter it. And just the benefits of common words are that they're, they're easier to understand, they're more approachable to people, they're a really crucial way to like get your, your reading level down to like an eighth grade reading level. And there's a short list here, and I think there's more in a resource we've attached to the end of this deck, so you'll have a big list when we send you these slides afterwards. And you can chat in other, like a complex word and an easier or, or common, it's common twin. And I will note that like for, I know acronyms are really common in government, university settings, and so on. Just a reminder to please define the acronym on first mention so that your reader knows what it means. So that's not a common everyday word, but just a reminder to help write in more plain language.

[46:25](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2785) And let's go to our last tip. So switching gears, read this to yourself, and then read it out loud. And the, the appears twice, and you may not have caught that if you just read it in your head. And this brings us to, I think the best tip I could give for writing and editing in plain language, and that is to read whatever you're writing or editing out loud. And why, you may ask?

[47:27](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2847) That is because your ears will hear things in writing that your brain just won't notice. And like, when I was a kid, and I said something grammatically incorrect, my mom would hear it and correct me. So just grammatical mistakes like that are much easier to catch when you're speaking them out loud. When you read in your head, your mind skips words or fills them in automatically. And like, no one is immune to this, it happens to everyone. So yes, reading out loud helps you catch funky grammar, complex words that don't sound natural, spoken. And if something doesn't feel right, when you say it out loud, it's a good indication that you should probably go back and try to edit it so that it does feel natural, spoken out loud. I think that is all I have for you today.

**Luke Hydrick**

[48:20](https://youtu.be/SPx4sIKfyRQ?t=2900) Yeah. Thanks, Lila. I'll just go through a couple wrap-up slides and we can transition to questions. Just first of all, just to acknowledge the VHA again for letting us share this and just revisiting these learning goals. So we hope that you would be able to explain these four things. If there are four things that you got from this, it would be the administrative burdens or challenges that customers encounter while interacting with the service process product tool communication. That you can identify administrative burden by defining a focus area and a customer, developing a journey map, identifying burdens with that journey map, prioritizing them. And then that you can use those 10 strategies, specifically the four that we talked about to address burden. And we're happy to share more about that when you get the slides later. And then use plain language really everywhere in a service, specifically in communications by using active voice, using short sentences and paragraphs, common everyday words, and reading out loud. Thank you all very much for your attention. Apologies that we went a little bit over time, but we can take any questions that you all have.

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Original page: https://innovate-us.org/understanding-identifying-and-addressing-administrative-burden · Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), as stated on innovate-us.org