How are IT organizations using DITA for compliance documentation (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA)?

November 10, 2023
|By Bryan Tipper

IT organizations leverage DITA XML to create comprehensive compliance documentation, addressing regulations like GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). DITA’s structured approach proves invaluable in this context by enabling the effective authoring, management, and dissemination of compliance-related information. Here’s how DITA is used for compliance documentation:

1. Modular Content: Compliance documentation often consists of numerous requirements, each with specific guidelines. In DITA, each requirement can be structured as an individual topic, ensuring modularity. This approach allows organizations to efficiently manage and update content related to each regulation or requirement without affecting the entire document.

2. Reusable Components: DITA promotes the reuse of content components, a crucial capability for compliance documentation. Organizations can create standardized definitions, explanations, or procedures for compliance elements, ensuring consistency across documents. When updates are needed, they can be applied uniformly to all instances of the reused content.

3. Metadata and Classification: DITA’s support for metadata and classification simplifies the organization and retrieval of compliance documentation. IT organizations can classify content according to regulations, document types, or other relevant criteria. Metadata enables users to easily find and access specific sections of compliance documents, ensuring they have the most up-to-date information.

Example:

Let’s consider the use of DITA for GDPR compliance documentation:


<!-- GDPR Compliance Document Structure -->
<map>
  <title>Organization XYZ GDPR Compliance</title>
  <topicref href="gdpr_requirement1.dita" />
  <topicref href="gdpr_requirement2.dita" />
  <topicref href="gdpr_requirement3.dita" />
  <topicref href="gdpr_definitions.dita" />
  <topicref href="gdpr_procedures.dita" />
  <topicref href="gdpr_references.dita" />
</map>

<!-- Individual Topic: GDPR Requirement 1 -->
<topic id="gdpr_requirement1">
  <title>Requirement 1: Data Minimization</title>
  <body>
    <p>This section explains the data minimization requirement under GDPR.</p>
    <section>...</section>
    <section>...</section>
  </body>
</topic>

<!-- Reusable Topic: GDPR Definitions -->
<topic id="gdpr_definitions">
  <title>GDPR Definitions</title>
  <body>
    <p>This topic provides definitions of common GDPR terms used in this document.</p>
    <section>...</section>
  </body>

In this example, DITA empowers IT organizations to create and maintain