Originally published 20 December 2005. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
In the dotcom boom, we all became familiar with some new acronyms. B-C (or B to C) represented the use of the Internet for Business (B) to communicate to Customers (C). Similarly B-B was applied to Business communicating with Business.
But B-B can also mean something else - such as Bureaucrat to Bureaucrat. Just read some of the Consultation Papers issued by Government departments - and try to penetrate the jargon and the acronyms.
This is not a new complaint, and neither is it the knee-jerk reaction against detail and precision, but there is something wrong when intelligent people from the target audience struggle to understand what the consultor means to say. True - a distinction must be drawn between public consultation - where plain English is essential - and stakeholder consultation where the comprehension test is different. The requirement there is that the stakeholder for whom the consultation is intended fully understands what is written.
The trouble is that there are a growing number of consultations that occupy both designations. They may be primarily targeted at a stakeholder community that is well-informed and familiar with its own vocabulary and concepts, but they may also have relevance to a wider public - and, in the context of the new Freedom of Information Act, we should expect any documentation to be intelligible to any reasonably interested individual.
There are several ways to improve the current situation. Apart from signing up to the Plain English Crystal Mark, consultors with complex proposals should provide better explanatory appendices - or better Executive Summaries. Better still, they might look at new consultation methods less prone to jargon than the traditional written document. And before consultors react with hurt and disappointment, one should acknowledge that some consultee submissions are equally obscure, and sometimes much worse. B to B works both ways! Trigger points
- If not already covered, consider the Plain English Crystal Mark, for both print and e-consultation use.
- Ask a member of the public to read a draft consultative paper, and 'sanity check' before publication.
- Send the Institute any particularly incomprehensible sentences or paragraphs for our Rogue's Gallery of mistakes to avoid.
This is the 31st Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement