Using Dita To Provide Consistent Communications To The Public

Using DITA to Provide Consistent Communications to the Public
Laurence Hart
Washington Consulting, Inc.

Agenda
Introduction
The Plan for the System
The Challenges and Lessons Learned
Wrap-up

The Problem
The goal of government is to serve the people….
…but paper seems to be a key output.
LOTS OF PAPER!!!

Government Publication Challenges
Evolving formats over the years
WordStar > Word Perfect > Word
Physical storage for paper records
Content creation is process intensive
Consistency between publications is hard to maintain

Enter DITA

DITA at 10,000 Feet
Darwin Information Typing Architecture
XML publishing based on Topics
Each Topic is written to stand alone
Three Topic types: Task, Concept, and Reference
Originally created by IBM
Donated to OASIS
http://dita.xml.org
Reuse of content is a key driver for implementing DITA

Publication Project Background
Federal Agency publishes lots of content
Manuals: Internal users
Guidelines: External users
Historically authored in Word
Cut-and-paste into XML for print processing
Publish as PDF and HTML
Published on cycle
Manual and repetitive process

The Agency’s Plan
Move all publications to DITA
Standardize the structure of all publication content
Enable reuse of content between publications
Increase publication output channels
Keep PDF for print
Add Interactive Electronic Technical Manuals for large documents
Identify supporting tools
EMC Documentum Content Server (including X-Hive, now XDB)
Quark XPress Author
XyEnterprise XPP (already owned)

High-Level System Design

Challenges and Lessons Learned

Content Creation Challenges
Authors liked their Word styles
Software is licensed per user
Authors and reviewers throughout entire agency
Not enough need to give license to everyone for once a year task
Quark Express needed to be configured
Training required for those configuring
Defining the styles and formats was an iterative process with Authors
Authors don’t trust automatic content reuse
XML editor specific tags not handled consistently by editors

Content Publication Challenges
Interfacing Documentum to XPP
Used Web Services
Development required to automate the interface for users
Assembling DITA Topics for publication
Manuals consist of multiple topics
Need to be able to publish manuals as sections or completely
Separate reviews for publication content and formatted output
Section 508 compliance reviews are time consuming and require coordination

Key Lessons
Focus on the Authors, their acceptance of the new processes and technologies is critical
Invest in tools, if things are too hard to use or don’t work right, people will switch back to Word
Training is critical
One step at a time, don’t move everything to DITA at once

Future Plans for the System
Manage images natively in Documentum
Now “managed” on desktops and email
More dynamic publishing
Remove schedule and update the print PDF automatically
Increase reuse
Switch for notifications of change to shared content sources

Thank You