Project Two: The White Paper

The focus of Project 2 is the white paper, a common report genre in the professional world. White papers are used in business, industrial, and governmental contexts to sum what’s known about a subject, or to introduce a new technology or policy. During this project you will learn about
the white paper genre through collaborative creation of a white paper.

• new writing and communication technologies that support professional writing in college and industry, with attention to open source and other freely available software or writing spaces (online networks, blogging, etc.)
• collaboration, project management, and strategies for writing and revising.
• producing a text for print that integrates visual content, such as screenshots, tables, flowcharts, illustrations, and/or graphs.

Your assignment in the second project is to research collaborative writing solutions (like Google Docs, Zoho, Basecamp, etc.) for a fictional crisis management organization whose members are often forced to communicate and compose documents at a distance. You will be researching and evaluating different collaborative writing suites for decision-makers. Then you will be responsible for writing a white paper that proposes the use of a specific collaborative writing program, including cost estimates, training, and advocacy, and any other concerns that might arise from a medium-sized organization adopting your solution.

The project is divided into 4 deliverables:

• Deliverable One: Annotated Bibliography, examining natural distasters, writing, and online communication (Team, 15 sources, 4 pages)
• Deliverable Two: Action Memo, giving your superiors 3 reccomendations (Team, 3 solutions, 3-4 page)
• Deliverable Three: White Paper, an informative, well-designed report written for multiple audiences (Team, 8-10 page, at least 1,250 words)
• Deliverable Four: Peer Evaluation Form (Individual)

In addition to these deliverables, each team will produce a progress memo at the end of week five, detailing the events of meetings, communications, and any work (individual or together) that you did. Who did what? What problems are arising? Are you on schedule?

Remember that the white paper is often not simply a written report, but a designed document that takes its visual presentation into its rhetorical consideration. In this project, you are being asked to not only create a well-researched, proofread, thoughtful white paper, but one that is visually interesting, has skimable sections, presents information in clear charts and graphs, and is otherwise presented professionally and creatively.

Collaboration is key in this project. Responsibilities may be delegated within teams, but students who either don't pull their weight or who don't share the workload (i.e. try to do it all themselves) will be penalized.

Disaster Management
For this project, teams will be working under the following scenario. This is meant to help you visualize your audience and understand your purpose in creating the white paper. If you need to make additions or revisions to the scenario (if you wanted to determine a specific budget, for example), each team will be abe to talk that over with me:

Summary

The disaster management organization you work for has identified several communication problems within its organization, and has decided it is time to modernize its approach using the latest in online collaborative writing software.

Scenario

You work for a large disaster management organization (which you will name) of about 1,000 employees headquartered in Washington, D.C. This organization is devoted to coordinating rebuilding efforts in the wake of large-scale natural disasters such as the recent tsunami in Indonesia, wildfires in California, earthquakes in China, and flooding in New Orleans (all of which your company had a hand in addressing.)

You are not "first responders," doctors, firefighters, or other emergency workers, but rather you are the people who go in after conditions have been restored and the process of rebuilding can begin. You manage the construction or repair of schools, hospitals, and homes, the hiring and training of new personnel, aid in the restoration of utilities (water, electricity, etc.), and the procurement and transport of necessary materials, food, temporary housing, etc. Your company is generally hired pro bono by larger organizations (various national governments, the Red Cross) as an all-purpose solution to rebuilding devastated cities and towns. These efforts often require a lot of money and a lot of paperwork.

Your organization has two major divisions, those who work in the field (disaster sites) and the dozen or so regional offices your company maintains around the world, and those who work at the main office in Washington D.C. who are responsible for administration and fund-raising (your organization relies in large part on charitable donations).

In recent years, there have been a number of communication problems within the organization. Reports and memos in particular take a very long time to write because, in many cases, these documents require input from people in the field, in the regional offices, and in Washington D.C., none of whom can usually travel to meet directly with the others. Field workers are frustrated because they cannot get money and materials as quickly as they would like, and the administrators, lawyers, accountants, and managers in D.C. often feel they do not have an accurate picture of what is going on in disaster areas.

Your team has been selected from many different areas of the company to investigate the possibility of using collaborative online writing software (again, like Google Docs, Zoho, Basecamp, etc.) to address these problems. In this project you will investigate the communication problems that spring up when people try collaborate at a distance, make recommendations about 3 possible solutions, and then write and design a report about one of these solutions for the company to use.