Starting in 1994, the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) undertook to design, develop and deploy an enterprise solution for the management, interchange and publishing of complex bilingual technical documentation. In being undertaken in the aftermath of, not one, but two dismal failures in this very area, the initiative faced almost insurmountable obstacles.

The presenter took on this challenge and led the design, development, demonstration, documentation and deployment of an enterprise standard for Digital Technical Documentation and then led the development of a shared application environment that could be distributed throughout the supply chain associated with a wide range of flagship equipment systems. In developing this shared application environment, the initiative deployed an adaptable approach to editing, managing and publishing SGML and XML content and thereby successfully implemented, for the first time, the arduous formatting and control specifications for side-by-side bilingual technical documents which represent a high water mark for complexity in the world of loose leaf publishing. The solution also included the introduction of an XML Web Interactive Electronic Technical Manual (IETM) capable of working within a strictly governed Intranet environment and delivering complex functionality on a wide range of platforms.

In this detailed case study, the technical and management challenges faced in first formulating an enterprise standard and then in managing a widely-distributed shared application will be reviewed. The case study will conclude with a detailed review of the business case parameters that were completed in 1992 and that supported the launch of the original initiative. A comparison will then be made with actual implementation experience after a decade of deployments. It is well documented that the original objective of reducing technical information lifecycle costs by 50% has been realized and that, given the scope of the implementations that have been successfully completed since 1997, the current annual savings now approach the original target of $100 Million dollars a year.