Posted: October 15th, 2022

OSAC Organization Chart

Module 6 Discussion Post
OSAC Organization Chart must be used for this assignment.

Choose one forensic discipline listed on the OSAC Organization Chart.

Address each of the following questions and prompts:

Does that discipline have a certification? If so, what is required to obtain that certification?
What efforts have been made in within the last 5 years to improve the science in your chosen discipline?
What improvements do you feel still need to be made?

Your initial post should be 200 to 300 words.

https://www.nist.gov/topics/organization-scientific-area-committees-forensic-science/osac-organizational-structure
Module 6 Discussion Post
Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) shares information about all the activities and standards that make a significant impact on the forensic science community. The office of the program is at NIST. It creates room for contributions and feedbacks connected to the OSAC. The program contains five forensic disciplines found on the OSAC Organization Chart. These forensic disciplines are such as crime scene/death investigation, physics/pattern interpretation, digital/multimedia, biology/DNA and chemistry/instrumental analysis.
Physics/pattern interpretation deals with bloodstain pattern analysis, friction ridge, footwear and tire, firearms and tool marks and forensic document examination. The forensic discipline has several experts who volunteer as affiliates. The volunteers are representatives of six different countries., crime laboratories, crime scene investigations, academia, public and judicial sectors. These volunteers have specific expertise of the affiliate which is rewarded through a certificate. To become an affiliate volunteer, one has to fill out a form provided by NIST and undergo training on the discipline. The volunteer is then certified after obtaining the skills.
In the past years, NIST has improved the discipline of physics/pattern interpretation by creating for centers of excellence to establish more rigorous, science-based and practices for the interpretation of patterns. This is going to give room for forensic scientists to gain their level of confidence in statistical computations by this discipline and the results got from the analysis. In my point of view, improvements like more specific equipment should be introduced to acquire more reliability and accuracy just like the DNA analysis. Also, more experts should be trained to avoid shortage which leads to deploying uncertified examiners.
Generally, OSAC contains five areas of the scientific committee and each has its subcommittee. It has many experts and forensic science practitioners who represent academia, federal agencies, local, state and the industry. The committees are referred to as forensic disciplines which include crime scene/death investigation, physics/pattern interpretation, digital/multimedia, biology/DNA and chemistry/instrumental analysis. I specifically chose physics/pattern interpretation which requires a certificate. The discipline has also improved over the past years. I feel that NIST needs to work on more improvements to acquire more accuracy and reliability.

Reference
Retrieved from https://www.nist.gov/topics/organization-scientific-area-committees-forensic- science/osac-organizational-structure

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