Can DITA facilitate the reuse of compliance content across multiple IT documents?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

DITA provides a powerful mechanism for facilitating the reuse of compliance content across multiple IT documents. This capability is especially valuable in IT organizations where compliance requirements often overlap or are consistent across various documents. Here are the ways in which DITA supports content reuse for compliance documentation:

1. Content Reuse: With DITA, compliance content can be modularized into topics, making it easy to reuse the same content in multiple documents. For instance, common compliance clauses or statements can be authored as DITA topics and then referenced or included in various compliance documents where needed. This ensures consistency and simplifies updates.

2. Conditional Processing: DITA offers conditional processing capabilities, enabling you to tailor compliance documentation for specific systems or requirements. By using conditional attributes, you can include or exclude content based on different criteria, ensuring that compliance documentation remains relevant for different contexts.

3. Linking and Cross-Referencing: DITA allows for linking and cross-referencing between compliance content and other relevant documentation. This ensures that updates made to a central compliance document automatically reflect in linked documents, reducing the risk of outdated information.

Example:

Here’s an example of how DITA content reuse works for compliance documentation:


<!-- Common Compliance Clause Topic -->
<topic id="common-compliance-clause">
  <title>Common Compliance Clause</title>
  <body>
    <p>This clause outlines our organization's commitment to compliance with industry standards and regulations.</p>
    <p>If you need to include this clause in your document, reference it using the topicref element.</p>
  </body>
</topic>

<!-- Compliance Document Example -->
<topic id="pci-dss-compliance">
  <title>PCI DSS Compliance</title>
  <body>
    <p>This document details our organization's compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).</p>
    <topicref href="common-compliance-clause.dita"/>
    <section conkeyref="conditional-processing"/>
    <section conkeyref="linking-and-cross-referencing"/>
  </body>

In this example, the “Common Compliance Clause” topic is modular and can be referenced in various compliance documents, such as the “PCI DSS Compliance” document, ensuring consistency and efficient content reuse.