Re: Status of the technical writer

[Eddie Hollon <eddiehollon -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

I agree with Gene for the most part, but I've got
another kind of example. I just escaped (!) the world
of government contracting, because it let me do very
little "technical" writing. For the military (and
engineering) contracts that we worked on, a team of
SMEs, marketers,  and "tech writers" developed
proposals in response to a Request for Proposal (RFP).
The request for RFP was written by military personnel
who rotate assignments, locations, etc. every 2 years
and are usually well-trained in military tactics, but
have very little writing experience. They basically
follow a book of regulations and guidelines for
developing the RFP with some oversight from someone in
administration.

On our end, all the "technical writing" was done by
ex-military personnel or ex-journalists who had
experience writing RFPs, military documents, and other
proposals. The documents we created were designed to
sell, but had to meet strict requirements for
technical data, which were usually written by SMEs and
(hopefully) edited. (And I'm not beating up on the
ex-military folks, just saying that should have been
used as SMEs, not writers)

Now, here's the punch line: if the proposal was
accepted, it became the contract...literally. Meaning,
it was accepted as a legal document and the terms were
that the contractor must meet the proposed obligations
on the military deadlines. After than, tech writing is
performed by contractor personnel who are usually
office staff or part-time personnel who go out to the
location to prop up the document set and then leave it
to the operations folks to maintain.

So, you can guess why the GSA has no understanding of
our concept of technical writing - it doesn't exist in
many contracting environments. 

Eddie


In the federal government, it pretty much always has
been.  The
content of documents in federal agencies is drafted by
technical
and field staff, and "technical writers" (if any are
used) review, 
edit and update to ensure that documents comply with
applicable 
agency and dept-specific requirements.  The
"technical" part is 
understanding the *document* requirements (which are
usually 
at least as complicated as filling out your income
taxes).  Most 
"technology" employed by government is produced by 
private-sector contractors, and the "tehcnological
technical 
writing" is done there.

I have no experience with government documentation on
the 
state or local levels, but I would expect them to be
similar.

Gene Kim-Eng

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