Supporting Statement

OMB Control #0693-0033

Expiration Date: 07/31/2022

NIST Generic Clearance for Program Evaluation Data Collections

Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science (OSAC) Standards Implementation Survey

FOUR STANDARD SURVEY QUESTIONS

1. Explain who will be surveyed and why the group is appropriate to survey.

On February 4, 2014, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced the formation of the Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science. The OSAC is a collaborative body of approximately 580 forensic science practitioners and other experts who represent all levels of the government, academia and industry.

NIST established the OSAC to strengthen the nation’s use of forensic science by supporting the development and promulgation of forensic science consensus documentary standards and guidelines. The ultimate objective of the OSAC is to create a sustainable organizational infrastructure that produces consensus documentary standards and guidelines to improve quality and consistency of work in the forensic science community.

OSAC-approved standards and guidelines will make up the OSAC Registry. The registry will be freely available.

The OSAC is made up of 29 OSAC units, which includes 22 Subcommittees, 7 Scientific Area Committees (SACs), and the Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB).

The group that will be surveyed are forensic laboratory directors and quality assurance managers (approximately 410 laboratories) both of whom may use Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) standards in their forensic laboratories. The survey is intended to measure how much the laboratories have incorporated standards in their work and to support OSAC program investments in the future for outreach, training and standards development.

2. Explain how the survey was developed including consultation with interested parties, pre-testing, and responses to suggestions for improvement.

The survey was developed as a result of a survey conducted by the Association of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD) and modified for use by the OSAC program. The results of the ASCLD survey provided useful information on implementation and this survey intends to focus in on those areas to measure what work still needs to be done to encourage more implementation of standards. The entire NIST OSAC program staff participated in editing, reviewing, and suggesting improvements to these survey questions. The quality manager serving on the FSSB participated as a beta tester and provided feedback for the OSAC program staff to incorporate to make the survey more efficient and affective. A question as the end of the survey requests participants to provide feedback to the OSAC Program Office for future recommendations.

3. Explain how the survey will be conducted, how customers will be sampled if fewer than all customers will be surveyed, expected response rate, and actions your agency plans to take to improve the response rate.

The survey will be conducted with an online survey tool and communicated through the networks of the OSAC program, the Association of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD), the Association for Quality Assurance Managers (AFQAM), the Associate of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners (AFTE), the International Association for Identification (IAI), the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME), and the Society of Forensic Toxicologists (SOFT). All participants identified through the 6 organizations will be targeted through e-mail from a distribution list that has been provided to the OSAC program, with an expected response rate of 50% given the size of the audience. To improve response rate we will utilize newsletters, websites, and communication channels through the OSAC members, affiliates, and all 6 organizations to maximize response rates. We estimate that approximately 800 people will be surveyed. The survey will take approximately 60 minutes to complete. The survey is targeting the laboratory director and quality assurance manager of approximately 410 public and private forensic laboratories.

Total burden hours are calculated to be 800 (respondents) * 60 (minutes) / 60 (minutes in an hour) = 800 hours.

Privacy Act Statement and SORN are not applicable for this collection, as information in not saved in a System of Records which retrieves by a personal identifier.

4. Describe how the results of the survey will be analyzed and used to generalize the results to the entire customer population.

The results of the survey will be analyzed by an OSAC program manager with the intended product to be a combined report on the current state of implementation based upon survey respondents. The responses will be anonymized and rolled up into charts and graphs to report the overall implementation status of all the standards on the OSAC Registry. This will be a yearly snapshot of the implementation of OSAC standards across forensic laboratories and the results will be compared on a yearly basis to determine effectiveness of implementation.