Skip to main content

About PBGC

PBGC in Plain English

PBGC protects America's pensions.  It's an important mission.  And we want you to understand how we carry it out.

Our communication team's challenge is to capture PBGC's work in plain English. We aim to get rid of any needless confusion while bringing you accurate information.

Recently we started asking you to rate the clarity of our communications.  Your survey comments are in, and we get the message: PBGC must do a better job of explaining our work in clear, understandable English.

We're committed to using plain language in new communications and fixing hard-to-understand language in existing material.

Making it Plain

We've already started to make improvements:

  • We've created a blog where we talk about our work in conversational style.
  • We're taking the jargon out of our news releases, frequently asked questions, and other website content.  
  • We're training professionals all across PBGC to simplify their writing, without dumbing-down the content.
  • We've appointed a plain language officer to oversee improvements in all PBGC communications.
  • We've created an Open Government page to share high-value PBGC data sets with the public.
  • And, we're putting together a to-do list of web pages to rewrite in plain English.  That's where you come in.

If the goal is clear communication from PBGC to you, only you can tell us whether we're hitting the mark.

Please give us your feedback. If you see confusing or unclear language on this website or in any other communication from PBGC, send a note to webmaster@pbgc.gov. We'll add it to our to-do list. As we post our reports and other plain language news here, please feel free to comment on them as well.

Together, we can make it plain.