Class Overview

1. Class Overview Administrative Policy Writing Spring 2012

2. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • Welcome to Administrative Policy Writing! • This course is designed to teach you about the types of writing used by: • governmental bodies and • business organizations and individuals that must interact with the government. • This course is intended for individuals who are interested in working for the government or in a regulated industry. • (That includes just about everyone.) • Or anyone interested in getting into a public-policy career in one form or another.

3. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • What are the learning objectives for the class? • My goal is that you finish this class with the following skills and knowledge: • The ability to write clear, concise, and professional documents in the style used by governmental bodies and businesses. • An understanding of several types of documents commonly used by the government. • A basic understanding of the role of administrative agencies in the government of this state. • The ability to find and cite government regulations. • The ability to analyze factual situations and apply regulations to those situations.

4. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • Over the course of the semester, we will review different types of writing produced by governmental bodies. • We will also practice applying those conventions in writing projects. • The writing projects for this class include: • Business letters written in response to a citizen inquiries • Guidance document published by a state agency • Investigation report • Public comments on a proposed regulation • Internal policy and procedures document • We will also do informal reading responses on real-world disputes related to policy and regulations.

5. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • In addition, we are going to learn about the conventions of public-policy writing. • Professional Style • Effective summaries or briefs • Business letter formatting • Plain Language • Citing regulations • The class material will come from a combination of sources: • Weekly discussion PowerPoint • Outside reading material mostly on the Internet • Links for all the reading material and assignments will be on the course schedule document. • The course schedule I emailed the class is a Word document with links to everything for the class. Make sure you don’t delete it. It will be like your textbook.

6. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • There is no textbook. (Save $$$!) • Much of the content for the class will come from these PowerPoints in our weekly discussions. • Thus, participating in these weekly discussion will help you get the most out of the class. • It is also the best way to ask questions and get immediate feedback. • If you can’t make it to our online discussion, be sure to watch the recorded version I will post online. • I would anticipate that the weekly discussions will be about 1.5 hours every week. (Some may be longer than others.)

7. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • We are going to use this program, Adobe Connect, to meet online for our weekly discussion. • If you have a microphone on your computer, feel free to ask questions. (But use a headset to avoid feedback.) • Otherwise, you should participate by using the chat function. • Feel free to stop me at anytime to ask questions. • We are going to be covering a lot of material. • I probably have a tendency to go too fast. Never hesitate to ask me to go back over something in our discussion. • I’ve been told that Connect has a tendency to crash. If so, we will have to start a new session. Don’t panic.

8. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Assignments • Your grade for the class will be a combination of quizzes on our discussions and the assigned reading. • And the writing projects for the class. • Some involve writing a short response memo or answering questions. • Some will be more formal projects that require you to produce an original document. • Each writing project will have a detailed assignment sheetposted on the course schedule. • Make sure you read it carefully. You must follow the assignment sheet to the letter in order to get the best grade.

9. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Course Objectives Page • Before you begin with the projects for this week, please download and read the Course Objectives document. • It has a breakdown of the grading for the course and information on how to submit assignments and policies for this class.

10. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Turning in Assignments • Important: 1378 Style. • Writing projects must be written in 1378 Style to receive a grade. • What is 1378 Style? • Typed in a Microsoft Word document. • Written in Times New Roman or Palatino 12 point typeface. • Double-spaced only when the project calls for it. (Some will be single-spaced.) • Name appearing at the top left-hand corner of the document you are submitting (unless it appears elsewhere in the document – e.g. memo). • Standard margins and character spacing. (Don’t monkey with the defaults to fudge the page count.)

11. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Turning in Assignments • All assignments must be emailed to me as an attachment. • When submitting an assignment, be sure to do a few things: • Put the name of the assignment in the subject line. • Don’t leave the body empty. Include some reference to the attachment. (This is a professional style habit.) • Title your Word document something with the name of the assignment and your name: • Example: Mark-Steinbach-Guidance-Document.docx

12. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Grading • How will writing assignments be graded? • How well does the project respond to the assignment criteria? (In other words, does it cover everything required by the assignment sheet?) • Does the product reflect careful analysis and thought? • To what extent is the project written in a professional style that is free from typos, grammatical problems, or other stylistic problems?

13. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Deadlines • It is very important that you keep up with the course schedule and turn assignment in by the due date. • All assignments are due by 11:00 pm on the due date. • I will not be sending out reminders. • It is entirely up to you keep up with the assignments and get them in on time. • This is important because no late work is accepted. • Deadlines are firm. The only possible exception is a real emergency that you can document. • An emergency means someone is in the hospital. • An emergency does not mean the printer at the computer lab is broken. • Why? Get ready for the professional world.

14. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Feedback • “Will I get feedback on my writing projects?” • Yes, I will write comments in you Word document and send it back to you. • Some writing assignments have two parts. • You will turn in the first part for comments. • Then you will use my feedback to help prepare the second part.

15. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Getting Help • If you have questions or are stuck on an assignment, I am very flexible about getting you the help you need. • First, email me. If we can resolve the issue over email, that is the best way for me. • Second, if you still need help, we can set up a meeting over the phone or in person. I am located in Cedar Park. I would suggest finding an ACC campus that is in between us. • I will have “virtual office hours” online availabe to chat in ACC’s Gmail. Wednesdays 11:00 am – 12:00.

16. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Your Instructor • A word about me. I am an adjunct professor at ACC in the Business and Technical Communications Department. • In my day job, I am a government lawyer. I work primarily in enforcing environmental regulations. So the class is going to have a flavor of environmental issues. But that is not all we will talk about. • Previously taught English at Cy-Fair Community College in Houston. • I deal with government documents on a daily basis. So I hope to provide you with something of an insider’s view on administrative policy writing. • Perhaps like you, I have an 8-5 job. So it will take me some time to respond to an email. I will try to check in the mornings. • I will respond, but it will not be an instant turn-around. • That is me. What about you?

17. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • That’s the course introduction. • Any questions?

18. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • I want to set the stage for the class by talking about the concept of open government. • The concepts of “openness” and “transparency” will pervade this class. • The most important differences between working in the world of private industry and government are openness and transparency. • The best way to describe these concepts is to compare the environment of government operation to the operation of private business.

19. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • If you run a business, your day-to-day operations are generally private. • Nobody has the right to demand you make your emails, letters, or other communications available to the public (unless specifically required by law). • Put another way, your information is presumed to be private, unless there is a reason you have to disclose it. • If your company is involved in a lawsuit, the court might require you to turn over documents to the other side. • If your company is regulated by the government, it might have to disclose certain documents (e.g. operational records) or post them for employees to see. • Why? Because individual liberty is a core value of our society: the freedom to keep your private affairs private.

20. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • When you work for the government (federal, state, or local), the opposite is the case. • Everything you do is presumed to be open to the public, unless there is some specific reason is should be made confidential. • Everything means everything! • An email you sent to your girlfriend from your work email • Your office’s budget, vendors, contracts • You salary • Reports and other documents your office produces • This high level of government transparency is another important value in our society. • Why?

21. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • Some reasons: • Make the government accountable to the people: are the elected officials and public servants doing a good job? • Expose corruption! • Encourage citizen participation. • Our society is based on the premise that governments exist to serve the people. The people are in charge of the government. • Thus, it follows that the people in charge have the right to see what their government is doing. • Remember the Declaration of Independence?

22. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government

23. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • Thus, one of the underlying themes of this class is writing in a open environment. • If you work for the government, you must write with the assumption that your document is public information. • Yes, there are some government documents that are not open to the public. • Medical records • Student records • Other examples? • But, generally speaking, the presumption of openness and citizen oversight guides how documents are written and published by the government. • Therefore, government writing should be clear, straight-forward, and professional(i.e. not sloppy). • The overall writing purpose should be to help the public or the regulated person or industry understand information.

24. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • Both the federal and state governments have laws that guarantee the public’s right to access information held by the government. • The federal law: Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). • Texas law: Public Information Act (“PIA”). • These laws allow members of the public to make written requests for information in the government’s possession. The government must either show that the requested information is confidential by law, or produce the information. • Texas also has an important law called the Open Meetings Act. • When government officials conduct official business, those meetings must generally be open to the public.

25. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • Do we take this kind of government for granted? • It is not the same everywhere! Read the article from the Wall Street Journal. • The article is about an open government controversy in China. • When you read it, keep in mind that under the Texas PIA, the government cannot ask why you want the information. • But, of course, our system is not flawless. • Does anyone have experience requesting information from the government? • Good or bad?

26. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • The Internet is an important tool to facilitate open government. • Never before have we had a system that can disseminate so much information so widely and so quickly. • Before the Internet, people had to make phone calls, wait in lines, or write letters to the government in order to obtain information. • Now we go to the Web without even thinking. • But we are still grappling with how the government should use this medium. • How much information should be online? • Should governmental bodies be required to post their entire non-confidential files online for instant public access? • Are there any reasons why government documents should not be instantly accessible?

27. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • If you look around the Internet, you will see a great deal of variation in how much governmental bodies put on their web sites. • As well as the quality and accessibility of the web site. • Some of the worst sites on the web are maintained by the government. But there are also some very good ones. • Some government sites maintain an enormous amount of information on the Internet: • Just one quick example. • The Texas Department of Transportation has a database of every planned road construction project in the state. • Obtaining this sort of information before the Internet would have been an enormous undertaking.

28. Open Government

29. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • Some bodies are responsible for a great deal of confidential information that should not be released to the public: • Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (aka “CPS”) • The FBI • Austin Community College • What confidential information would you guess these bodies keep? • These bodies have the challenge to provide an open web site that provides helpful information while preserving their sensitive data. • Other governmental bodies simply do not have the financial resources to create and maintain extensive web sites. • Hudspeth County is a county in west Texas. • Population 3,476. • How much can it realistically devote to maintaing a web site?

31. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Open Government • The readings for this week include a web site maintained by the U.S. government called the Open Government Initiative. • This is part of a directive from President Obama to make agencies of the federal government more accessible online: • Get more data on the web for public use. • Skim the “Open Government Directive” addressed to heads of federal agencies for specific requirements. • Then watch the YouTube link: an evaluation of this effort by an organization called the Sunlight Foundation. • To what extent has the federal government cooperated with this mandate? • Think about why there is so much resistance to providing open access to information.

32. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Audience • Another key concept for writing in an open environment is audience. • Public policy writers, governments, and businesses must be mindful of their audience to create effective communication. • You must know about your audience’s • Needs • Values • Knowledge • This applies if you want to be persuasive to your audience, or whether you want to simply communicate information. • The chapter on audience linked to the course schedule is from a book on technical communication. • Read this chapter and the method of audience analysis.

33. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 Homework • You have until Saturday to finish all of the assignments. You may complete them at your own pace. • Complete the Week 1 Quiz • Complete the Introduction Memo • Complete the Audience Analysis for the State Health Services Publication • Complete the Open Government Discussion Memo • In addition, look at the “optional” links. • I will have some optional readings posted many weeks for more information on our topics.

34. Administrative Policy WritingSpring 2012 • We’re done! • Email me if you need help. • Remember, I will be online on Wednesday at 11:30 for email chat.