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