As someone who spent years of his life writing and editing manuals, I'm interested. A scattershot of points:
- The $84 figure isn't a bogus accounting trick like the infamous hammer and toilet seat of the past (Reagan admin, maybe?). The contract is for $84 million, so it's actual expense to the taxpayers.
- I've no handle on the reasons for the volume of manuals--it seems like overdoing it, but it's the President's aircraft and the military can over specify things. As I read the article, it's basically taking the existing manuals for the 747 and working in the material for all the customizations and additions being made to the plane to make it ready for the next president.
- I wonder about those manuals--the 747 has been around forever, or at least for 50 years, having first entered service in 1970. Given bureaucracy, there's some likelihood that portions of the manuals were first written 50 years ago. I'd hope that's not the case. But when bureaucracies keep COBOL systems working for 50 years, similar dynamics could have kept manual text and organization the same for 50 years.
- It's probably inevitable that manual writing would be separated from the people who actually know the plane but it's a danger point--raises the possibility of miscommunication between the doer and the writer.
- I wonder about innovations in manual design and delivery. I know some maintenance manuals for some functions in the world, I forget what and where, have been computerized and redesigned to work through visual displays, like the former Google Glasses or virtual reality displays. I believe some apps have been released which allow you to point a phone at a product on store shelves and pull up information on it, like nutrition data, etc. It seems to me logical that manuals could use a similar delivery system. If so, are "pages" the right term, or has terminology changed the definition of a "page"?
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