DITA can significantly assist organizations with content governance and compliance, ensuring that content adheres to established standards, policies, and regulations. Content governance involves the management of content creation, distribution, and maintenance processes, while compliance ensures that content meets legal, industry-specific, or internal requirements. DITA contributes to content governance and compliance through structured authoring, controlled workflows, version control, content reuse, and metadata:

Structured Authoring

DITA enforces a structured approach to content creation, breaking it into modular topics. This structure provides a consistent framework for content authors to follow, helping them adhere to established content guidelines and standards.

Controlled Workflows

Organizations can implement controlled content workflows using DITA. Content creation, review, approval, and publishing processes can be formalized and automated, ensuring that content follows predefined steps and meets compliance requirements at each stage.

Version Control

DITA includes version control capabilities, allowing organizations to maintain a complete history of content revisions. This is crucial for auditing and compliance purposes, as it ensures that content changes are tracked and can be traced back when necessary.

Content Reuse

DITA’s content reuse capabilities enable organizations to maintain consistency in content by reusing approved and compliant content components across various documents. This reduces the risk of introducing non-compliant content.

Metadata

Metadata in DITA can be used to capture important compliance-related information, such as content expiration dates, legal disclaimers, or content classification. Metadata ensures that compliance-related data is associated with content components.

Example

A pharmaceutical company produces medical documentation that must adhere to strict regulatory guidelines and compliance standards. They utilize DITA to maintain content governance and compliance:

Structured Authoring

All medical documentation, including drug information leaflets and clinical trial reports, is authored using DITA’s structured approach. This ensures that content is consistently organized and follows a predefined structure.

Controlled Workflows

The company establishes controlled workflows for content creation and review. Content goes through multiple stages of review and approval, involving subject matter experts, legal teams, and regulatory authorities. Workflow automation ensures that content is only published when it complies with all necessary regulations.

Version Control

DITA’s version control capabilities are utilized to maintain an audit trail of all changes made to medical documentation. This is crucial for regulatory audits, allowing the company to demonstrate the history of content revisions and approvals.

Content Reuse

Approved and compliant content, such as standard drug dosage information, is stored as reusable DITA components. When creating new drug documentation, these components are reused to ensure consistency and compliance.

Metadata

Metadata within DITA topics captures compliance-related information, such as the document’s intended regulatory jurisdiction and approval status. This metadata ensures that compliance details are associated with each document, simplifying tracking and reporting.