There are those in the United States that oppose this standard for accreditation fire investigations. The Chairman of the Organization of Science Area Committees for Forensic Sciences is one of those that object to this standard being used. According to the chairman, 17020 was developed for bodies inspecting to determine compliance with expectations. This is not useful for use in forensic investigations in which we seek to avoid any expectations. There is potential value in a standard for forensic investigation, but sadly this document does not address this. 17020 does not address the development of findings from an inspection. The work product is simply a listing of variations from the expectation.

The subcommittee chairperson responded to the chair’s comments. Regarding the ISO/IEC-17020 standard for forensic agencies, the term Inspection applies to crime scene investigations and/or examination of forensic evidence. The term Inspector also applies to an investigator who uses professional judgment to examine a crime scene with the aim to contribute to determining what, where, when, how, and why something happened and who was involved. Of those US‐based accrediting bodies that offer accreditation to forensic organizations, two offer accreditation and have accredited forensic organizations to ISO/IEC 17020. ISO/IEC 17020 is referenced in the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) Guidance document, ILAC G19:08/2014 Modules in a Forensic Science Process., [ilac.org] which is used globally by Accrediting Bodies around the world. ISO/IEC 17020 addresses the crime scene/examination process and while it does not further address the analysis of the findings, that does not make the document non- relevant nor not useful in its application to crime scene investigations. It just speaks for the need for another standard to be developed that addresses this stage of the investigation. As such, the comment received is considered non-persuasive and the standard should be posted on the registry.

Where the chair of this committee does not agree with the standard other countries, such as the UK are in agreement with the chair of the subcommittee. UKAS, the UK’s accreditation body, is developing an assessment approach for the accreditation of Fire Investigation at the request of the Forensic Science Regulator (FSR). Accreditation is planned to be progressed using the international standard ISO/IEC 17020 – “Conformity assessment – Requirements for the operation of various types of bodies performing inspections” which is already being used as the assessment standard for volume/serious scenes of crime activities. The technical assessment of the Fire Investigation will also take into consideration the requirements of ILAC G19 – Modules in a Forensic Science Process, Forensic Science Regulator’s Codes of Practice and Conduct and the principles of UKAS document RG201 – Accreditation of Bodies Carrying out Scene of Crime Examination.

Jim Mazerat
Forensic Investigations Group