OSAC Redefines Structure, Authorities, and Processes for Greater Impact

NIST has made some important changes to OSAC's organizational structure, authorities, and processes, effective October 1, 2025. These changes are designed to improve OSAC's operational efficiencies and strengthen our support of NIST's mission. 

Background

During fiscal year 2025, the OSAC Program Office (OPO) at NIST completed a review of OSAC’s structure, authorities, processes, and communication pathways to assess ways to focus resources and achieve operational efficiencies. This activity focused on reviewing OSAC’s operational units and the processes that standards follow to be placed on the OSAC Registry. OPO also engaged with the Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB) and its Process Improvement Task Group to explore uniform and more efficient ways for assessing standards. The result of this evaluation and engagement led to the following changes that became effective on October 1, 2025.

Organizational Structure and Authority Changes

Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB)

• Will continue to:
  • Serve as OSAC’s governing board, determining the overall direction of OSAC and focusing more effort on strategy and standards implementation activities.
  • Approve all OSAC policies and procedures and set the requirements and recommendations for what needs to be included in standards being considered for the Registry.
• Will no longer:
  • Review and approve OSAC Proposed and SDO Published standards prior to placement on the OSAC Registry. The Standards Review Panel (SRP) and Scientific Area Committees (SACs) have been designated with this authority (see below).
• Is Finalizing:
  • The technical review and scoring rubric that will be used to perform uniform evaluations of all OSAC Proposed and SDO Published standards by subcommittees, SACs, and the SRP. The Document Management Workbook containing the rubric scoring tool will be available this winter. 

*NEW* Standards Review Panel (SRP)

• This fixed panel will serve as the final reviewer and approver of OSAC Proposed Standards for placement on the OSAC Registry. Through the application of a standardized review process, this standing group of reviewers will provide more consistency and efficiency in the review and approval of standards for the Registry.  
• The panel will consist of nine voting members, including a chair, four researchers/practitioners, and members with expertise in human factors, legal, quality assurance, and statistics.
• The SRP Chair will report to the FSSB.

FSSB Resource Task Groups

• The Quality Task Group (QTG) and the Statistics Task Group (STG) have sunset. Most, if not all, of their members will remain on subcommittees or be embedded in SACs.
• Two informal “Communities of Practice” have been established for quality and statistics, which will allow interested individuals to continue relevant discussions.
• The FSSB will continue to have Human Factors, Legal, and Terminology Task Groups.

Scientific Area Committees (SACs)

• SACs will now be the final approving authority for SDO Published standards. This change empowers the SAC to utilize its expertise in determining which standards meet the FSSB’s requirements for placement on the Registry, thereby creating greater efficiency by eliminating a step in the approval process.
• Addition of members. Each SAC will add members with expertise in human factors, legal, quality, and statistics. This will add four voting positions to each SAC, allowing them to work with the SAC Chair, Vice Chair, and Subcommittee Chairs.
• Four SACs have been renamed. During the September 16-17, 2025, FSSB meeting, the FSSB voted to rename the following SACs:
  • Chemistry: Seized Drugs & Toxicology changed to Seized Drugs & Toxicology SAC.
  • Chemistry: Trace Evidence changed to Trace Evidence SAC.
  • Physics/Pattern Interpretation changed to Pattern/Impression SAC.
  • Scene Examination changed to Scene SAC.
• A subcommittee has been added to the Scene SAC. The Bloodstain Pattern Analysis Subcommittee has been moved from the previous Physics/Pattern Interpretation SAC to the Scene SAC.
• Addition of an Emerging Technologies SAC. OSAC has added an 8th SAC focused on Emerging Technologies (ET) to enable new disciplines/content areas to be introduced into OSAC and incubated with increased support from the OSAC Program Office and OSAC leaders. The concept is to introduce new topics into OSAC through Task Groups for further development and to determine whether they should be moved to one of the seven existing SACs, continue incubation in a task group, or be discontinued. This allows some flexibility in considering new topic areas. During FY26, the ET SAC will be further developed, and specific topics will be identified for pursuit. 

Subcommittees

• The number of subcommittees has decreased from 22 to 19. OSAC has sunset the Fire & Explosion Investigation, Forensic Odontology, and Speaker Recognition Subcommittees. Standards published by SDOs in these content areas will still have a pathway to be elevated for placement on the OSAC Registry, either to replace existing standards or add new standards within the scopes defined by the relevant SAC.
• The Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) Subcommittee has moved. As mentioned above, the BPA subcommittee moved from the previous Physics/Pattern Interpretation SAC to the Scene SAC. This leaves four subcommittees in the newly named Pattern/Impression SAC and three subcommittees in the newly named Scene SAC.

External Engagement

• Increased engagement with professional associations. Seven Professional Association Representatives (PARs) on the FSSB have additional duties. The PARs will now be responsible for the following:
  • Providing the FSSB with regular updates on their professional association's standards and implementation efforts and organizational activities.
  • Sharing feedback from their professional association with the FSSB on suggested priorities to pursue.
  • Providing the FSSB with challenges and opportunities for improvement identified by their professional association.
  • Briefing their professional association on OSAC’s activities and increasing engagement/outreach between OSAC leadership and their professional association, including the consideration of OSAC presentations at their professional association’s events.
• Increased engagement with SDOs. The OSAC Program Office is encouraging subcommittee members to increase their engagement with their SDOs.  This could include:
  • Joining the SDO to shepherd OSAC-developed documents through the SDO’s standards development process.
  • Developing new work items collaboratively with the SDO as joint ventures.
  • Participating in the SDO to revise existing standards.
  • Providing comments on SDO documents while out for SDO public comment.