Developing annual reports.
Cygnus was involved in all aspects of producing congressionally-mandated, annual publications for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Department of Justice (DOJ), including the NIJ Annual Report, Searching for Answers: Drugs and Crime Evaluation Report, and Domestic Violence, Stalking, and Anti-Stalking Legislation: Annual Report to Congress, which are made available to other policymakers within federal, state, and local governments.
Selected activities included:
- Developing work plans and schedules;
- Collecting and synthesizing information;
- Interviewing NIJ staff and grantees;
- Writing the text and editing for clarity, completeness, and consistency in style;
- Proofreading editorial, reviewer, and author changes and revisions;
- Verifying the accuracy of references;
- Preparing all front and back matter;
- Designing the layout, covers, tables, charts, and graphs;
- Proofreading the desktop-published text, graphics, and blueline proofs for quality and clarity of all graphic elements;
- Preparing electronic or hard-copy camera-ready artwork;
- Disseminating new research findings in a timely manner; and
- Literature review and synthesis of research.
We provided speech writing services to NIJ staff and undertook other publications assignments, such as the development of the NIJ Annual Program Plan; the NIJ Handbook, Institute-wide policies and procedures manual; and a Research in Brief, summarizing NIJ’s active grants.
Unerring Quality Control
The high-visibility, policy-sensitive nature of these reports demanded unerring quality control. Each draft version of a report was subject to rigorous in-house quality control review to ensure that all information included was accurate, complete, and clearly presented. This review included a content review to ensure that the text accurately reported findings, presented no culturally or politically insensitive generalizations, and reflected current NIJ policy. Each of the annual reports was produced within 88 days, making the timeframe one of the most challenging features of the project.
The tight timeframe required expert publication management to coordinate the numerous tasks involved:
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Coordinating the flow of work;
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Liaising with Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative, other NIJ staff and lead writers, editors, proofreaders, and graphic artists;
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Producing several drafts for various NIJ reviews; and
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Incorporating the reviewers’ comments.
