The Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science (OSAC) addressed the issue of fire investigation falling under 17020. They were addressing an appeal from Dr. Byler that ISO 17020 was not the appropriate to be used in the accreditation process for fire investigation companies and agencies. The complaint was the ISO 17020 was a conformity standard. It was not applicable for forensic science. The negative comment presented by Dr. Byler were reviewed by five different scientific committees, which included 70 scientific individuals. All five scientific committees approved ISO 17020 for listing on the OSAC registry. They said that ISO 17020 is meant to address the crime scene examination process and not the tool to be used in the analysis of the findings. One of the arguments against the use of this standard is that the standard addressed the "inspection" process and not an "investigation" process. OSAC basically said their use of the word inspection of a scene is the same as investigation it is meaning. The next argument was the accreditation agencies were using a check list they developed and was not one develop through the standard process that is used by NFPA.

There has been an attempt made to downgrade this accreditation process using ISO 17020. If you are going to make this statement one should consider the following. Disciplines for which accreditation is offered include but are not limited to:

" Anthropology
" Biology
" Bloodstain pattern analysis
" Crime scene investigation
" Digital evidence
" Disaster victim identification
" Document examination
" Fire and explosive investigations
" Firearms and toolmarks
" Fire debris and explosives
" Footwear and tire
" Friction ridge
" Geological materials
" Gunshot residue
" Materials (trace)
" Medicolegal death investigation
" Odontology
" Seized drugs
" Toxicology
" Video imaging
" Wildlife forensics

Anyone saying these are not science-based professions.

Historically, many crime scene units were part of a traditional state or metropolitan crime laboratory, which may appropriately have been accredited to ISO 17025. Because many police agencies are taking on tasks previously handled by big crime laboratories - such as crime scene investigations, latent print analysis, ten prints, foot and tire print examinations, firearms examinations, handwriting analysis, digital media, and anthropology - accreditation to ISO 17020 may be more appropriate.

ISO 17020 accreditation is appropriate for agencies using inspection processes (examination, measurements, testing, and comparison of materials or items) based on professional judgment rather than conducting analytical scientific testing.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group