Lets simplify legal jargon Alan Siegel

so basically we have public leaders

public officials who are out of control

they’re writing bills that are

unintelligible and out of these bills

are going to come maybe 40,000 pages of

regulations total complexity which has a

dramatically negative impact on our life

if you’re a veteran coming back from

Iraq or Vietnam you face a blizzard of

paperwork to get your benefits if you’re

trying to get a small business loan you

face a blizzard of paperwork what are we

going to do about it i define simplicity

as a means to achieving clarity

transparency and empathy building

humanity into communications I’ve been

simplifying things for 30 years I come

over the out of the advertising and

design business

my focus is understanding you people and

how you interact with the government to

get your benefits how you interact with

corporations decide who you’re going to

do business with and how you view brands

so very quickly when President Obama

said I don’t see why we can’t have a

one-page plain English consumer credit

agreement so I locked myself in a room

figured out the content organize the

document and wrote it in plain English

I’ve had this checked by the two top

consumer credit lawyers in the country

this is a real thing now I want one step

further and said why do we have to stick

with the stodgy lawyers and just have a

paper document let’s go online so many

people might need help in computation

working with the Harvard Business School

you’ll see this example when you talk

about minimum payments if you spend

sixty two dollars for a meal the longer

you take to pay out that loan you see

over a period of time using the minimum

payment it’s 99 dollars and 17 cents how

about that you think your bank is going

to show that to people but it’s going to

work it’s more effective than just

computational aids and what about terms

like over the limit

perhaps a stealth thing to find it in

context tell people what it means when

you put it in plain English you almost

force the institution to give the people

away i default out of that and not put

themselves at risk plain english is

about changing the content and one of

the things I’m most proud of is this

agreement for IBM it’s a grid its

calendar at such-and-such a date IBM F

responsibilities you have

responsibilities received very favorably

by by business and there’s some good

news to report today each year one in

ten taxpayers receive a notice from the

IRS there are 200 million letters that

go out running through this typical

letter that they had I ran it through my

simplicity lab it’s pretty

unintelligible all the parts of the

document in red are not intelligible we

looked at doing over a thousand letters

that cover 70% of the transactions

they’re in plain English they’ve been

tested in the laboratory when I run it

through my lab this heat mapping shows

everything is intelligible and the IRS

has introduced the program looking at

there’s one there are a couple of things

going on right now that I want to bring

to your attention there’s a lot of

discussion now about consumer financial

protection agency how to mandate

simplicity we see all this complexity

it’s incumbent upon us and this

organization I believe to make clarity

transparency and empathy a national

priority there is no way that we should

allow government to communicate the way

they communicate there is no way we

should do business with companies that

have agreements with stealth provisions

and that aren’t intelligible so how are

we going to change the world make

clarity transparency and simplicity a

national priority

what does a machine know about itself

can it know when it needs to be repaired

and when it doesn’t in industries like

manufacturing and energy they’re using

predictive analytics to detect signs of

trouble helping some companies save

millions on maintenance because machines

seek help before they’re broken and

don’t when they’re not that’s what I’m

working on I’m an IBM er let’s build a

smarter planet