Designing a Report Template

Background

You are part of the information staff for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) program, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The organization’s goal is to protect the health and value of American agriculture and natural resources. Working with other federal agencies, Congress, the states, agricultural interests, and the general public, the PPQ responds to potential acts of agricultural bioterrorism, invasive species, and diseases of wildlife and livestock. The organization’s information staff helps PPQ scientists communicate research findings to both a general audience and expert audiences from agriculture, industry, government, science, and education.

Amid growing concerns of new pest introductions to domestic plant resources, the PPQ is undertaking a safeguarding review. This review’s goal is to propose specific recommendations on how to improve the PPQ’s ability to protect the nation’s plant resources from harmful plant pests. Drawing on the expertise of representatives from government, industry, and academia, the PPQ plans to publish a final report documenting the review’s findings and recommendations, as well as several follow-up reports.

“Creating this report will be a little tricky,” your supervisor, Charlotte McQuarrie, explains. “This report will include findings and recommendations from four separate committees: Pest Exclusion, Pest Detection and Response, International Pest Information, and Permit. Unless we give the committees some guidance, we are likely to get four different page designs—”

“—and that means we’ll spend hours reformatting all the material so the report has a consistent design,” you say, interrupting.

“You got it. I think we need to start thinking about the design of the whole report right now. If we can decide on its overall design and page layout, we can give each committee a Word template to follow. Our job will be a lot easier when it comes time to compile all the information into a single report. I’m also planning to use this design for other follow-up reports the PPQ will publish over the next year and a half.”

“Do you have any ideas for the design of the report?” you ask.

“Not yet. I want you to come up with a design and develop a template based on that design. I have some unformatted text and some graphics from the Pest Exclusion Committee for you to experiment with. I’ve added some brief comments using Word’s reviewing toolbar to get you started.” (See Document 7.1.)

“What do you have in mind?”

“I’d like to be able to email each committee a Word template for the report. This template would reflect the design of the report. For example, if we go with a two-column design, the template would already have a two-column layout. All the writers would need to do is add content. They could use styles that we’ve defined for headings, body text, lists, captions, and so on. Your first step is to create the report’s page design.”

Your Assignment

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