OSAC Opens Comment Period on Interdisciplinary Training Standard for Forensic Science Practitioners

Today, the Organization of Scientific Area Committees for Forensic Science (OSAC) opens the thirty-day comment period for ASTM E2917-19: Standard Practice for Forensic Science Practitioner Training, Continuing Education, and Professional Development Programs.  A multidisciplinary team within OSAC drafted this cross-cutting document and introduced it as a draft standard to ASTM International where over the course of a year it progressed through ASTM’s formal consensus process and was published as a standard in February 2019.  OSAC is now seeking feedback on whether this standard should be placed on the OSAC Registry which is OSAC’s formal acknowledgement that the content is technically sound and should be adopted by the forensic science community.

This standard provides foundational requirements for the training, continuing education, and professional development of forensic science practitioners to include training criteria toward competency, documentation, and implementation of training, and continuous professional development. This information is intended for forensic science service providers to help establish a training framework with program structure and content; for forensic science practitioners as they acquire and maintain their knowledge, skills, and abilities; and for training programs to manage and support the continuous development of their employees.  This document outlines minimum training criteria and provides general information, approaches, and resources for all forensic science disciplines. The standard would complement additional specific requirements for each forensic science discipline (for example, relevant degree programs, higher education) if developed by subject matter experts in their respective fields.

Please review the standard and provide comments by 11:59 PM EST on June 1, 2019.  

The intent of the open comment period is to collect feedback on inclusion of the standard on the OSAC Registry (OSAC is not soliciting potential revisions to the documents themselves.) Comments should be specific as to why the document should or should not be placed on the OSAC Registry.

The ASTM E2917-19 standard was submitted by the OSAC Virtual Interdisciplinary Subcommittee #4: Training, Continuing Education & Professional Development (consisting of representatives from multiple OSAC subcommittees) for consideration.