How do government agencies manage variations of content for different departments and initiatives using DITA?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

Government agencies utilize DITA XML to efficiently manage variations of content for different departments and initiatives. This structured content approach enables organizations to maintain consistency across diverse documents while accommodating specific needs and requirements of individual departments or projects.

Content Reuse

DITA encourages content reuse by allowing organizations to create modular topics and components. For government agencies, this means that common information shared across various departments can be authored once and reused wherever needed. For example, information about policies or regulations that apply universally can be maintained in a central location and referenced across multiple documents, ensuring consistency and accuracy.

Conditional Processing

Conditional processing is another key feature of DITA that government agencies benefit from. It enables the inclusion or exclusion of content based on conditions, such as the department or initiative. For instance, a user guide may have sections that are relevant only to specific departments or projects. By applying conditional processing, agencies can tailor documents to different audiences while maintaining a single source of content.

Example:

Here’s an example of how DITA helps manage content variations for different government departments and initiatives:


<topic id="user_guide">
  <title>User Guide</title>
  <body>
    <section>
      <title>Main Section</title>
      <p>This section is common to all departments.</p>
    </section>
    <section conkeyref="hr">
      <title>HR Department</title>
      <p>This section is specific to the HR department.</p>
    </section>
  </body>

In this example, a DITA topic includes a main section that is common to all departments and a section specific to the HR department. Conditional processing, indicated by the ‘conkeyref’ attribute, ensures that the HR-specific content is included only for the HR department’s documentation, allowing government agencies to manage variations efficiently.