Zen Citizen: An effort towards clearer, bribe-free government processes

 

Last month I wrote about my volunteering project with Zen Citizen on translating the death registration form into plain English. This form gave me a chance to work closely with the founder of Zen Citizen, Vineeta Kommineni. Today's post features Vineeta and her organization and takes a look at their work from a plain language perspective. 

Founded close to two years ago, Zen Citizen is a volunteer-driven initiative that explains procedures in simple language and shares hacks/workarounds and undocumented information to help citizens independently apply for services. 

When Vineeta’s father passed away, she visited government offices many times to get documentation done. Each time she would be turned away by the staff asking for some or the other missing detail or document. The intent was clear: to wear her out enough to push her into paying a bribe. 

It didn’t really work that way. Eventually, Zen Citizen happened. While the core idea behind Zen Citizen is to empower citizens to access government services easily and on their own, the deeper goal is to fight against corruption, Vineeta told me in a telephonic interview. 

“Why should a citizen take the help of even middlemen to exercise their rights? Often the middlemen’s fee covers the bribe,” Vineeta said. 

The struggle for information is real in India. Finding out the police station, revenue district, or municipal ward your house is a part of should be just a few clicks away in this day and age. But it isn’t. One of Zen Citizen’s initial projects, Civic Compass, solved this for the residents of Bengaluru.  

Other tools Vineeta’s team have built are Kaveri Village Finder that helps you locate your property within the revenue department’s maps and Kaveri Image Resizer, a nifty way to resize photos for marriage certificate applications. These tools are workarounds for buggy government websites that frustrate and slow down users. 

Plain language in Zen Citizen’s work

“It isn’t enough to say file an affidavit. It needs to be explained in plain language. And in the absence of such information, Zen Citizen comes in. What’re the different ways in which something can be misunderstood? We must look at all that.

“Writing in plain language is not difficult. The hard part is caring enough about the user to do it,” Vineeta said.

Her current work with Seva Sindhu is to translate government forms into plain English. It’s a portal that hundreds of thousands of people visit everyday to avail of services such as birth or death certificate, police verification certificate, bus passes, and so on. “We are currently working only on the text and not doing any changes in the backend or redesigning the UX as that’s a safe, low-friction place to begin,” she informed me.

But plain language often goes deeper than text: it is about design and, as earlier noted, about empathy – aka getting into the user’s shoes. So I asked Vineeta what her approach would be if a change needs to go deeper than the text level. Take, for instance, the language field in the death registration form. Getting clarity on how to fill this field is not simply about editing the text or providing an explanatory note – see my post on this last month. This one field is enough to show that the form was not designed in a user-first way. 

To this, Vineeta replied, “We started with writing guides to help citizens navigate dysfunctional systems with less frustration. Our goal was to make the best of the situation. We did not want to fight the system or try to convince the government to change its processes—that felt like a battle for another day.” 

Fair enough. One must choose their battles and Zen Citizen has chosen theirs. Plain language is, of course, central to any work that strives to bring clarity to government processes. One does start with the text, but usually the work grows beyond it.

Translating the death registration form into plain English

 

I worked on the death registration form as a volunteer for Zen Citizen. I'd have liked to use some screenshots but the login is very buggy and I could not get into the Seva Sindhu portal once I completed the project. So, here’re some text-only highlights: 

Preferred language: This is a field at the beginning of the form. At first, it seems like an innocent enough query. But look at it more deeply and it can unhinge the entire form. By preferred language, what is the government asking? Is it the preferred language in which I want to fill the form? Or, is it the preferred language in which I want the Death Registration certificate to be provided? 

I selected English and proceeded to the subsequent fields. However, the language preference continued to haunt me. Further below in the form, it asks for the deceased’s name in Kannada. This on an English form. What happens if I am not a Kannada-speaking person? Of course, you can always use transliterating tools to input the name in Kannada, but how do I verify if it’s a correct reproduction of my name? 

The converse is even more problematic: that is, being asked to type the name in English when I have chosen Kannada as my language for the form. In English, one’s name can be spelled in so many ways. How do you verify if it’s correct if you don’t know English? This can result in a critical failure because if the certificate spells your name wrong, it’s a dud. None of the government agencies will accept it and getting it corrected is a lifetime’s work. 

Ration card: The form assumes everyone has a ration card! How did this come to be? If you don’t have a ration card, you cannot even begin with the form as the name of the deceased is automatically populated from the ration card. 

Date & time of death: The time selection menu progresses by the minute. This can be very tedious to navigate to the exact hour and minute. Providing a time selection menu like we use to set alarms in mobile phones shouldn’t be too difficult. The other question is why the time of death is relevant, unless we are investigating homicide. 

We also looked at the necessity of some of the data being collected – like the age of the deceased’s spouse. We are waiting to hear from Seva Sindhu on this and other queries. 

My learnings from this project as of now

• The form is not designed from the user’s perspective. It seems to primarily solve things for the government agency rather than the citizen.  
• It works on many assumptions -- that someone typing in English also knows how to type their name in Kannada; that everyone has a ration card; that if they cannot figure out something, they can always avail the services of a broker. 
• The form does not seem to be tested with users. Else, some of the things I highlighted here may have caught the eye of the form creators. 
• The form does not seem to take into cognizance the varied background of the users. Given that it’s a death registration form, it is applicable to everyone (!) and hence must be usable by everyone. 

The lacunae of this form are not unique to it. God knows, there are worse government forms out there. It is representative though and makes for a good beginning. Hope to be able to report positively on this project in the days to come. 

Why plain language may not work for you

I recently came upon this study of terms of use contracts from tech companies. Two things stand out: 

1. A plain language translation of the contracts made it much easier for users to understand what the contract actually said. 

2. At the same time, it made some users trust the companies much less, once they understood what the contract actually said. 

The study says, “Participants inherently trusted companies using plain language summaries more and were more willing to share personal information with them.” However, they backtracked when they realized that the companies were essentially saying, ‘I’m taking your data, I can use it however I want, and you have no legal recourse.’ 

So, does plain language work to win the trust of customers or does it backfire? 

On the face of it, it may appear that it backfired for the tech companies. But let’s dig a little deeper here. Let’s begin from the beginning, or at the top of the funnel, in marketing-speak. Let’s start at how an individual turns into a customer of a company in the first place. 

Typically, companies invest a lot of time and money in understanding their target audience and tailoring their advertising campaigns with terms and visuals that their target persona use, understand, and relate to. They spend oodles of money to come up with taglines with deep emotional pull and strong brand recall. 

However, the same time and effort do not always go into sustaining the customer’s trust once they become a customer. It’s almost as if the companies have split personalities. 

See examples below. 

Exhibit #1: Airtel
Airtel’s homepage feels like a luxury lounge with lots of breathing space. Messaging is clear and crisp. The call to action is staring you in the face. Not an extra syllable.   

But here’s how the terms look like:

I can hardly read it, given the narrow columns down which it’s flowing. This can’t be thought through. Is this a display glitch? For the record, I had opened it on my laptop on Chrome browser. Somehow I find it hard to believe that while the rest of the site is optimized, the terms aren’t?!

Not only are the terms hard on the eyes, but the language also gets denser, more passive, and distanced from the customer, with phrases such as “It is clarified and stated that…” 

Gone is the luxury lounge. I feel ditched. 

Exhibit #2: ICICI Prudential

Here’s an interactive product explainer from ICICI Prudential. It’s easy on the eyes and gives various options for you to play around with and explore. Note that it uses terms such as “his death”. 

In the screenshot below, you can see the use of pronouns such as “we”, “our”, “you”, and “your”.

Now, savour the following text from the terms and conditions: 

“In the event of the Life Assured’s death due to an Accident…” Note how they hesitate from saying “your death”. 

“The revival will take effect only if it is specifically   communicated by Us  to the You.” Yes, the you!!!

“A policy of life insurance may be called in question at any time within three years from the date of issuance of the policy or the date of commencement of risk or the date of revival of the policy or the date of the rider to the policy, whichever is later, on the ground that any statement of or suppression of a fact material to the expectancy of the life of the insured was incorrectly made in the proposal or other document on the basis of which the policy was issued or revived or rider issued: Provided that the insurer shall have to communicate in writing to the insured or the legal representatives or nominees or assignees of the insured the grounds and materials on which such decision to repudiate the policy of life insurance is based: Provided further that in case of repudiation of the policy on the ground of misstatement or suppression of a material fact, and not on the ground of fraud, the premiums collected on the policy till the date of repudiation shall be paid to the insured or the legal representatives or nominees or assignees of the insured within a period of ninety days from the date of such repudiation.” Enough said?

From marketing-speak to legal terms, it does not feel like I am dealing with the same company. Yet, it is the same me they are addressing, either to woo me into being their customer or impose those mind-boggling terms on. 

So, it’s just this: communication from companies is broken. It is disconnected. For me, Airtel is Airtel – the company that provides me cell phone services. ICICI Prudential is the company that provides me life insurance. And so on for all the companies whose products or services I use. I don’t see it as the marketing department of Company X or the legal department of Company Y. When I sense a disconnect in the language of the company, comes the first feeling of I’ve been had. Or at least, that the romance is over. 

The use of plain language throughout the company’s communication can address this gap. It can make the communication feel more connected, more whole. 

But wait, didn’t those tech companies use plain language and yet, some users said they trusted the companies less after their contracts became clearer? Does that mean plain language didn’t work? 

Actually, plain language worked. It worked to help users cut across the jamboree of words and see what the companies actually meant. But if the company’s intention is to harm users or cheat them or take advantage of them in some way, plain language will simple make this intention clear.  

Moral of the story: If plain language is used to “privacy wash” or “ethics wash”, that is, if companies use plain language to pretend to be trustworthy but actually aren’t, it will fail. 

Do not use plain language if you are not ready for it. Plain language is ethical communication, above all else. Yes, it can help your marketing messages become clearer and more focused. Customers can easily understand them and hence trust the company more. But the actual offering of the company must stand up to the promise delivered by the use of plain language. Else, don’t even try. 

Plain language and design rethink: IRCTC

A few days ago, I booked a train ticket on the IRCTC website. I then had to cancel it for some reason. I tried to look up the cancellation and refund procedures. It wasn’t an easy find or read. I noted a few things down on how the website could be better with plain language and design and improved user experience.

For those not aware, irctc.co.in is the official website of the Indian Railways for online ticket booking. With a monthly traffic of about 13 million, it is one of the most visited websites in India. 

User experience
The cancellation and refund procedures are hidden away as PDFs. Why so, when we know that PDFs cause frustration and slow task completion. A webpage makes for better user experience than a pdf: Its easier to navigate, is interactive, and does not require you to download it.

An explanation video would have done the job much better, especially for cancellation. But given that it is a government website, I am not going to push that too much.

As I write this, I realize that’s how I have been conditioned to expect less from the government, not more. This post shall then be about overcoming this conditioning: to expect more from the government, indeed, to demand it.

A few other things I noted were (a) the general busyness of the website, which was mildly disorienting to me. The chatbot takes too much space on the screen. Even when minimized, it’s prominent. 

And (b) the glaring lack of translation, even machine translation. For such a highly-used website in a country that speaks so many languages, how do you explain this?

Now, the language part.
The document is confused about how to address the user. It says “user,” “you”, and “passenger” at different times. It’s better to address the user in just one way, and “you” will do just fine. But what definitely needs to be changed is the use of the possessive pronoun “his”.

Some other plain language edits:

Original
“Access IRCTC e-Ticketing website by providing correct Username and Password on Login screen.”

Plain language version

“Log in to the IRCTC e-Ticketing website.”
(Obviously, if you do not provide the correct username and password, you cannot log in. Why bloat the sentence then?)

Original
“If user wishes to cancel his e-ticket, go to 'My Transactions' and Click 'Booked Ticket History' link under My Account menu.”

Plain language version

“Go to 'My Transactions' and Click 'Booked Ticket History' link under My Account menu.”
(The user is reading the e-ticket cancellation guide. What other purpose in life could they possibly have at that point?)


Still, all of this is far better than the language of the refund rules document which simply reproduces the government’s gazette notification. No attempt has been made to rewrite the text for laypersons.

Original
“If amount debited from customer account and ticket not issued, IRCTC will refund the entire Fare and IRCTC convenience fee electronically (as credit to the relevant credit /debit card account used for the transaction), but the bank/card transaction charges are likely to be forfeited.”

Plain language version

“If the amount is debited from your account and ticket not issued, IRCTC will refund the fare and IRCTC convenience fee electronically to your account. However, you may lose the bank/card transaction charges.”

Original
“In case of e-tickets shall be cancelled online or online TDR shall be filed within the time limits prescribed under these rules for obtaining refund.

Where a RAC ticket or wait-listed ticket is presented for cancellation, the refund of fare shall be made after deducting the clerkage if the ticket is present for cancellation upto thirty minutes before the scheduled departure of the train irrespective of the distance.”

Plain language version

“To obtain a refund, cancel e-tickets online or file the TDR online within the time limits mentioned here.

Cancel an RAC ticket or wait-listed ticket at least 30 minutes before train departure. IRCTC will then refund the fare minus its fee.”
(Clerkage seems to be railway jargon. The user doesn’t need to be bothered with it. IRCTC charge or fee gets the meaning across.)


The edits I have provided here are not the only way of simplifying these sentences, but are only guidelines. The point being that IRCTC needs to talk “to” its users and not “down” at them. And that writing in plain language is not all that difficult, if the intention is to help achieve the user’s objective as quickly and easily as possible.

Plain language: a portal to translation, accessibility, user experience

Plain language intersects with many other professions. It can be an enabler of better translation, better accessibility, and better user experience (UX).

Let me explain how. And, at the end of the article, I also talk about how all four areas of work can and should come together to enable a better experience of the web for anyone.

I write this article because I have worked in the translation industry and I am a plain language writer and editor. Yet, I often see that professionals in both fields work in parallel, but hardly together. Such bubbles also perhaps exist between accessibility and plain language, and UX and plain language. This article is an attempt to show that together is better.

Plain language and translation

Plain language is, in actuality, an act of translation. A plain language editor converts mystifying mumbo-jumbo into information that the intended audience can understand and use. If you compare the before and after versions, it might just feel like two different languages!

A translator also needs to be a plain language writer and editor. At least, a good translator does.

When a translator first encounters a chunk of text in the source language, they must first understand it. If this is text is not in plain language, the translator – whether or not they acknowledge it – mentally does the plain language editing. Only then, can they proceed to write the text in the target language.

As Dominique Joseph, translator and plain language trainer, puts it, “[Translators] translate the meaning, not the words.” She goes on to describe a number of steps that she takes as a translator to make the text “easy to read, easy to understand, easy to use.” She has put it wonderfully and you should head over to her blog to read it in full.

As I went through her steps, I realized that what she is describing is about “helping readers find what they are looking for, understand it, and then take action based on that information.” And that, my friend, is plain language.

When plain language moves from being a mental process of the translator to being an explicit step in translation, or better still in authoring, translation improves.

Marie-Elise Georgelin, plain language trainer at Labrador Language Services, writes in the latest PLAIN E-journal, “...using plain language means:

• messages can sink in faster

• there are fewer misinterpretations

• translations will be quicker, more effective, and more accurate.”

When Labrador’s translation team worked on plain source text, they produced translations which also had a high plain language score and fewer words. “The quality of the source text systematically improved the translation by the same amount,” Georgelin writes. She says plain language in the source text can also similarly improve machine translation output.

Plain language and accessibility

Plain language is an essential part of the accessibility tool kit. The Washington Post says, “Writing in plain language makes our content more accessible to a wide variety of people, including those with cognitive disabilities, lower reading literacy and less background knowledge of the topic or concept being covered. This also matters in the design of user interfaces.”

A more targeted version of plain language is available for people with reading and learning disabilities. It is called Easy to Read. It helps “people with intellectual disabilities learn new things and take part in society,” to name a few benefits.

A few years ago, I worked for an online entertainment magazine where I would re-write popular news items into easy-to-read articles. I would first re-write them in plain language and then do an easy-to-read version. Doing the plain language re-write was the bulk of the work, I observed. Easy-to-read was just taking care of a few more technical things from that point.

Again, you don’t always have to be disabled to appreciate how plain language can make text more accessible to you. Imagine going through a dense paragraph filled with jargon and big, confusing words when you have a splitting headache.

Plain language and user experience (UX)

UX is at the very heart of the plain language movement. Plain language was born to serve only one purpose: help the user achieve their objective. “User” may not be the particular word they used back in the 1970s when the first efforts began to write in plain language. But whether you call them the reader, consumer, or citizen, it is still the same thing.

When a user is on your website, you cannot hem and haw, throw fat slabs of gobbledygook at them, and expect them to be still hanging around. The user is on your website for a purpose. And, the plain reality is that your content must help them achieve that purpose.

Plain language lets you have that conversation with your user without getting in their way, without alienating them. It is about sharing information they are seeking and came to your website for.

By writing in plain language, you also hit the right spots with SEO. People almost always use plain language when they are searching for something. If your content is already embedded with these keywords, your potential users will find you right away.



Not to forget that all of the above areas of work – translation, accessibility, and UX – also have several overlaps and that none are enough on their own, not even plain language.

For instance, translation increases accessibility. Let’s remember that the purpose of accessibility is to ensure “...social inclusion for people with disabilities as well as others, such as older people, people in rural areas, and people in developing countries”. (Emphasis added.) Or, as Alba Villamil, user researcher from HmntyCntrd, says, plain language is not enough when designing for immigrants or people with English as Second Language (ESL).

Let’s say you have plain language and translation. However, if you have elements on your website that disrupt the user, it’s lose-lose. Large, persistent ads on some Indian newspaper sites come to my mind. I often lose the thread as I am reading on these sites when paragraphs are divided up by huge blocks of ads or distracting, garish video ads display right next to the article.

There possibly are other areas of work with which plain language intersects to enable fulfilling human experiences. Do write in if you think of any.