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European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
Proceedings
European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts MJ Fereday Forensic Science Service, 109 Lambeth Rd, London SE1 7LP, United Kingdom 1 KOPP National Laboratory of Forensic Science - SKL, SE-58194 Linkoping, Sweden Presented at the Forensic Science Society AGM and Autumn Meeting, Glasgow, November 2002
Introduction The European Network of Forensic Science (ENFSI) was founded approximately ten years ago to fill the need for cooperation and the exchange of experiences and information on development for Forensic Science laboratory managers. To begin with ENFSI could be characterised as a club for managers of broad scientific forensic laboratories, but it has now developed into an organisation with an aim to keep European Forensic Science at the forefront of the world. A detailed description of the development of ENFSI can be found in [I]. At present ENFSI has 50 Members from 33 European countries (Figure 1). Among the countries that do not yet have a member are several small countries without a laboratory, some of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, some countries from the south-eastem part of the former Soviet Union, Albania and Moldavia. However two laboratories from Moldavia are at present seeking membership. An outline of the present ENFSI organisation is given in Figure 2. As before, the members, that is to say the directors of Forensic Science institutes form the core. They meet once a year, to decide on ENFSI matters and to elect members of the ENFSI Board and the Standing Committees for the three main ENFSI areas. One of the standing committees is named European Academy of Forensic Science and has as its main responsibility the organisation of the triennial open Forensic Science meetings. Two meetings have been held so far. The first in Lausanne, Switzerland in1997 and the second in Cracow, Poland in 2000. The next one will be held in Istanbul, Turkey in 2003. The Quality and Competence Committee (QCC) is responsible for the area, which is the issue of this paper. The Expert Working Group Committee is responsible for co-ordination of the 15 Expert Working Groups that cover the major Forensic Science areas. The areas are Digital Imaging, DNA, Documents, Drugs, Fibres, Fingerprints, Firearms, Fire and Explosion Investigation, Information Technology, Speech and Audio, Handwriting, Marks, Paint and Glass, Road Accident analysis and Scenes of Crime. More information on ENFSI may be found at the website: www.enfsi.org. Why do we need quality and competence assurance? There are several reasons why there is a greater need for assurance programs today than say 10-20 years ago.
Paul Kirk in his paper The Ontogeny of Criminalistics, 1963, discussed whether Criminalistics is a science, a profession or merely an occupation, or as it is often travestied: Is Forensic Science a science, a profession or a craft? Most of us would reply that Forensic Science is a little of each. However during the aforementioned period of time, the emphasis has changed from a mixture of science and craft into more of a profession. The value of a university degree has also been reduced now that more or less everyone goes to university. It is certainly not enough for an individual with a university degree today to be considered an expert. The turnaround time of the personnel in a forensic laboratory has been reduced as well. Earlier you could say, "Once a forensic scientist always a forensic scientist." Now work in a forensic laboratory is often merely a stepping stone in a career. Forensic science has also had a remarkable success - the number of forensic scientists has become much larger and they produce a lot more per unit of time. The forensic laboratories have become production units rather than research units - with the performance of the organisation becoming more important than individual efforts. This development has meant that the director's job has become a managerial job rather than a first scientist's job. What is more natural for a professional manager than to use the tools of management that you find in similar types of work around you - as for instance in the process industry? Quality Assurance is one of these tools. On top of this general development there have also been some remarkable examples of miscarriages of justice that were caused by misleading forensic science reports. We will only mention the conviction of the Birmingham Six, the conviction of the Guildford Four and the Kiszko case. It is thus essential that all possible efforts are made to minimise the risk that forensic science can give misleading information to the courts. Quality is, in our minds, the most important aspect of forensic science; much more important than turnaround times. Quality can only be achieved by competent forensic practitioners that work under the guidance of a quality system and with the right philosophy of approach.
O The Forensic Science Society 2003 Key words Forensic science, ENFSI, quality, standards.
science&justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
Page 99
MJ Fereday and l Kopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
Figure 1 The ENFSI Member laboratories.
ENFSI Quality and Competence work As mentioned before, the QCC committee is responsible for the ENFSI Quality and Competence work. It works, together with representatives for the Expert Working Groups and the laboratories, to develop policies and to provide advice to the Expert Working Groups and ENFSI Members and to help the laboratories to comply with best practise and international standards. The committee is headed by Bob Bramley, Great Britain, and has, at present, members from Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the Netherlands. The work of the QCC may best be summarised by its list of projects: To develop a framework for best practise manuals; To develop a competence assurance system for forensic science practitioners; To develop guidance on best practise for the validation and implementation of methods; To raise awareness within ENFSI of international quality
Page 100
standards and the process and resources available to support laboratories achieve accreditation; To advise, monitor and support Expert Working Groups in the design, running and assessment of proficiency tests and collaborative exercises; To develop guidance on best practise for the quality management of computers in laboratories. QCC has also ideas about future projects: To develop best practise guidance on sampling; To develop best practise guidance on the measurement of uncertainty; To develop a communication strategy and the QCC contribution to the ENFSI website. The project documentation can be found on the ENFSI website: www.enfsi.org Of these projects, we will discuss the two main ones: Quality Assurance (QA) and Competence Assurance (CA).
science&.justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
MJ Fereday and I Kopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
Figure 2 ENFSI Organisation. The acronyms mean: EULO, European Union Liaison Officer; AESLO, Liaison Officer for AES, where AES stands for co-operation between ENFSI, ASCLD the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors and SMANZFL Senior Managers Australian and New Zealand Forensic Laboratories; QCLG, Quality and Competence Liaison Group.
ENFSl Members (Laboratory Directors)
ENFSI Board
Standing Committee for Quality and Competence QCC
Standing Committee on Expert Working Groups EWGC
Standing Committee for ENFSl Open Activities EAFS
15 Expert Working Groups
European Academy of Forensic Science meetings
I
One issue-one day seminars Multi-lingua project Quality assurance ENFSI has made the following policy commitment: ENFSI wishes to promote consistent and reliable scientific evidence through the whole forensic process from scene incident to court. As one part of this aim it is the policy of ENFSI that all Members should have achieved, or be taking steps towards, EN ISOlEC 17025 compliant accreditation for their laboratory testing activities. In determining this policy ENFSI accepts that progress will be slower in some countries than others for a number of reasons, including differences in national accreditation systems and differences in the operation of legal systems. Where EN ISOEC 17025 compliant accreditation cannot be achieved, ENFSI encourages the use of other Quality management standards with broadly equivalent objectives.
for a quality system of the kind we are discussing since there already was a kind of quality control by the courts. We do not hear that any more. To make it possible to monitor the development, it has been decided that there should be a yearly evaluation of the quality system situation for the ENFSI laboratories. Hopefully, the evaluation will lead not only to better information but to better progress in the advancement against the goal. A questionnaire, that will be used for the evaluation, is presently under construction by the QCC. The situation differs greatly between laboratories in different parts of Europe. According to Sippola [2] a worst case situation can be described as follows: deficiencies in basic instrumentation, e.g. microscopes, balances, chromatographs, computers, etc;
' lack of high-tech instruments, e.g. SEM, bullet speedometer, CE (for DNA) etc;
What is the current QA situation in Europe?
As far as we know at present, only five of the members of ENFSI have an accredited laboratorv. but several are at vresent involved in the tedious work to launch their quality system. l-here is, at present, no reliable information on how far the ENFSI laboratories have come in their efforts towards the aforementioned ENFSI goal. What we have noticed is that there is a rising awareness of the need of a quality system and of accreditation. In some countries it was felt that there was no need
.
,
science&justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
deficiencies in availability of consumables; improper calibration or no calibration of equipment; lack of (reliable) reference materials; deficiencies in participation with proficiency tests; no control over competence of personnel; absence of documentation (personnel registers, methods, soPs, instmment register, maintenance, etc). However, a more common situation is the following:
Page 101
MJ Fereday and IKopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
management is not committed to the quality system; the laboratory does not function according to the quality system; the quality system covers only a part of the activities of the laboratory; familiarisation and training is not systematically documented; no corrective action to address the non-compliances found in the internal audits; insufficient validation;
Figure 3 Overview of the Competence Assurance Project.
'7 ENFSI
CAP-02 Strategy Document of the Competency Assurance Group
measurement uncertainty not estimated or it is unrealistic; no corrective action after deviation from acceptance criteria; proficiency test results are not fully exploited; calibrations have not been performed according to the plan. Sippola stresses that the key factor in the work to get to accreditation is the personnel and that the staff members of the laboratory must carry out all permanent development together. The achievements are entirely up to the laboratory itself since external spoon-feeding does not guarantee any success. But that, of course, does not exclude external support. Estonia is a good example, where financial support from the European Union together with support from the Swedish and Finnish laboratories has moved the laboratory from a bad situation to being near accreditation in a matter of a couple of years. There is certainly a need for more efforts of this type. Competence Assurance One of the objectives under the ENFSI goal that all ENFSI laboratories comply with best practice and international standards for quality and competence assurance is to develop a competence assurance system for Forensic Science practitioners. For this work a project group has been formed. The Competence Assurance Project (CAP) group has members from Sweden, Netherlands, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Germany and England and deals with Competence assurance for ENFSI forensic science practitioners.
Why do we need to be assured of the competence of those who practice forensic science? It is, perhaps, worth remembering another statement made by Paul Kirk, nearly forty years ago. He referred to forensic science as having "all the responsibility of medicine, the intricacy of the law and the universality of science. In as much as it carries higher penalties for error than other professions, it is not a matter to take lightly, nor to trust to luck." We have made great strides in looking at organisational quality through Quality Management Systems and accreditation. However, it is important to remember that accreditation of a laboratory does not, of itself, imply that the staff of that laboratory are competent. We need, now, to extend this approach to individuals and look at personal competence and the concept of common standards of competence for practitioners of forensic science. Why is it important to have such common standards? It is important because the key people in the process are not forensic scientists but the users of forensic science - the law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice systems. They
Page 102
CAP-00 Code of Conduct CAP-01 ENFSI Strategic Plan 2001-2005
CAP-03 Standards of Competence for Practitioners in the Forensic Process
ROLES
CAP-04 Roles of Practitioners in the Forensic Process CAP-06 Assessment Strategy
have the right to expect the same competent performance from forensic scientists irrespective of where that science is practised. We now want to look at how we can define competence and how we can assess whether competence has been achieved. How do we define and recognise competence? Is it about how a person dresses or looks? Is it about qualifications or experience? Is someone who has been doing something for thirty years more competent than someone who has only been doing it for five years? How do we recognise a competent person? We believe that it is impossible to define, and hence recognise, competence in any objective manner in the absence of standards. What is competence and what is it not? Competence is about performing the role, for example of a forensic scientist, competently. It is about demonstrating competence in the workplace and not the classroom, that is to say about actually doing the job. It is not, directly, about qualifications and training. A highly qualified person need not be "occupationally competent". Competence is a mixture of knowledge, skills and their application and behaviours or attitudes. All three are essential for defining competence. Let us look at knowledge - scientific knowledge alone is not enough. It is important to know about forensic science itself and
science&justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
MJ Fereday and IKopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
the forensic process and how to apply scientific knowledge to the solution of forensic problems. As to skills, there are the application of technical skills and the application of "forensic skills", by which we mean assessment of the requirements of a case, interpretation of forensic "data" and report writing. It is the "forensic skills" which are key -to us the modern forensic scientist is a "forensic data processor" with the accent on "data processing" and not "data generation". To complete the competence equation we have behaviours and attitudes. It is possible to be skilled and knowledgeable but if you do not portray the right behaviours and attitudes you can not be classed as competent. We are talking about competence for ENFSI forensic science practitioners and by these, we mean individuals involved in the "forensic process". In CAP we have defined the "forensic process" as a series of discrete steps between the apprehension of a suspect or investigation of a crime and the conclusion of an investigation at a court of law or tribunal. What is the connection between the forensic process as we described it, and competence? All individuals must demonstrate competence at all points in the forensic process. The chain of competence is built on the weakest link. The competence of the forensic scientist can be compromised if individuals working in other parts of the forensic process are not themselves competent. We need to be able to determine if such compromise has taken place. Incompetent evidence collection or incompetent laboratory work results in the wrong results being delivered to the judicial system. In Figure 3 is an overview of the CAP work. The first document mentioned, CAP-00, is a code of conduct for ENFSI Forensic Practitioners. It is of course similar to other documents of this type. We have recently had it sent out for feedback to the ENFSI Members and the Working Groups. The result is that the answers from members are quite positive, but those from some of the experts are very negative. They feel it unnecessary to detail "issues that are self-evident". We do not accept this view and feel that above all it is important that there is a base for discussion on behaviours.
What are the key roles in the forensic process? There are many key roles in the forensic process. For the purpose of the initial phase of our work, the CAP group has defined four roles. These are the Scene of Crime Investigator, the Analyst/Assistant, the Reporting Analyst and the Reporting Scientist. In some organisations a single individual may perform more than one of these roles. There are other roles that will be considered in due course. This is where we are at present. We will now go on to put these documents to the test in a pilot project in two areas - Questioned Documents and Marks. Three or four laboratories will be involved. They are FSS UK, SKL Sweden, NFI the Netherlands and perhaps also a further laboratory. Already, we know that the occupational standards, which detail what an individual practitioner needs to know and understand in order to meet the standards, do not cover the important issues of the history and philosophy of forensic science and they need to be supplemented by some form of knowledge based examination. Work on developing such a system is in progress. The last step in the CA programme is to devise how the certification process shall be undertaken. Here we need to think a lot more before we are ready to suggest a solution. One of the problems is to decide how wide or narrow an expert area shall be. As a starting point for this discussion we have the areas of the Expert Working Groups but when you ask them, several want the area split up into subspecialties. When you ask the managers, they rather want the experts to be certified in a wider area. In conclusion we believe that competence assurance is needed. It is one of the means to move to the goal of the same quality and standard of forensic science irrespective of where it might be practised. We believe the future is not only about competence but also about being able to demonstrate to the world at large that we are competent. We believe the work that we are doing in the Competence Assurance Project Group is laying the foundation for taking competency and its assessment forward across Europe and beyond. References 1
2
CAP-01 details the Goal and Objective mentioned above and CAP-02 gives a general description of the different steps in the certification programme given in this picture.
Kopp I and Sprangers W. History of ENFSI. Z Zagadnld Nauk Sadowych, z, 2002, 203-21 7. Sippola E. Accreditation examples of some laboratories. Z Zagadnien Nauk
Sadowych, z, 2002, 195-198.
3
Fereday MJ. Competence Assurance for ENFSI Forensic Practitioners. Z Zagadnien
Nauk Sadowych. z, 2002, 176-185.
The standards, CAP-03, are occupational standards that are based on the work done here in UK by the UK Forensic Science Sector Committee. For a further discussion of the standards see
PI.
sciencetkjusticeVolume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
Page 103
European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts MJ Fereday Forensic Science Service, 109 Lambeth Rd, London SE1 7LP, United Kingdom 1 KOPP National Laboratory of Forensic Science - SKL, SE-58194 Linkoping, Sweden Presented at the Forensic Science Society AGM and Autumn Meeting, Glasgow, November 2002
Introduction The European Network of Forensic Science (ENFSI) was founded approximately ten years ago to fill the need for cooperation and the exchange of experiences and information on development for Forensic Science laboratory managers. To begin with ENFSI could be characterised as a club for managers of broad scientific forensic laboratories, but it has now developed into an organisation with an aim to keep European Forensic Science at the forefront of the world. A detailed description of the development of ENFSI can be found in [I]. At present ENFSI has 50 Members from 33 European countries (Figure 1). Among the countries that do not yet have a member are several small countries without a laboratory, some of the countries of the former Yugoslavia, some countries from the south-eastem part of the former Soviet Union, Albania and Moldavia. However two laboratories from Moldavia are at present seeking membership. An outline of the present ENFSI organisation is given in Figure 2. As before, the members, that is to say the directors of Forensic Science institutes form the core. They meet once a year, to decide on ENFSI matters and to elect members of the ENFSI Board and the Standing Committees for the three main ENFSI areas. One of the standing committees is named European Academy of Forensic Science and has as its main responsibility the organisation of the triennial open Forensic Science meetings. Two meetings have been held so far. The first in Lausanne, Switzerland in1997 and the second in Cracow, Poland in 2000. The next one will be held in Istanbul, Turkey in 2003. The Quality and Competence Committee (QCC) is responsible for the area, which is the issue of this paper. The Expert Working Group Committee is responsible for co-ordination of the 15 Expert Working Groups that cover the major Forensic Science areas. The areas are Digital Imaging, DNA, Documents, Drugs, Fibres, Fingerprints, Firearms, Fire and Explosion Investigation, Information Technology, Speech and Audio, Handwriting, Marks, Paint and Glass, Road Accident analysis and Scenes of Crime. More information on ENFSI may be found at the website: www.enfsi.org. Why do we need quality and competence assurance? There are several reasons why there is a greater need for assurance programs today than say 10-20 years ago.
Paul Kirk in his paper The Ontogeny of Criminalistics, 1963, discussed whether Criminalistics is a science, a profession or merely an occupation, or as it is often travestied: Is Forensic Science a science, a profession or a craft? Most of us would reply that Forensic Science is a little of each. However during the aforementioned period of time, the emphasis has changed from a mixture of science and craft into more of a profession. The value of a university degree has also been reduced now that more or less everyone goes to university. It is certainly not enough for an individual with a university degree today to be considered an expert. The turnaround time of the personnel in a forensic laboratory has been reduced as well. Earlier you could say, "Once a forensic scientist always a forensic scientist." Now work in a forensic laboratory is often merely a stepping stone in a career. Forensic science has also had a remarkable success - the number of forensic scientists has become much larger and they produce a lot more per unit of time. The forensic laboratories have become production units rather than research units - with the performance of the organisation becoming more important than individual efforts. This development has meant that the director's job has become a managerial job rather than a first scientist's job. What is more natural for a professional manager than to use the tools of management that you find in similar types of work around you - as for instance in the process industry? Quality Assurance is one of these tools. On top of this general development there have also been some remarkable examples of miscarriages of justice that were caused by misleading forensic science reports. We will only mention the conviction of the Birmingham Six, the conviction of the Guildford Four and the Kiszko case. It is thus essential that all possible efforts are made to minimise the risk that forensic science can give misleading information to the courts. Quality is, in our minds, the most important aspect of forensic science; much more important than turnaround times. Quality can only be achieved by competent forensic practitioners that work under the guidance of a quality system and with the right philosophy of approach.
O The Forensic Science Society 2003 Key words Forensic science, ENFSI, quality, standards.
science&justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
Page 99
MJ Fereday and l Kopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
Figure 1 The ENFSI Member laboratories.
ENFSI Quality and Competence work As mentioned before, the QCC committee is responsible for the ENFSI Quality and Competence work. It works, together with representatives for the Expert Working Groups and the laboratories, to develop policies and to provide advice to the Expert Working Groups and ENFSI Members and to help the laboratories to comply with best practise and international standards. The committee is headed by Bob Bramley, Great Britain, and has, at present, members from Finland, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the Netherlands. The work of the QCC may best be summarised by its list of projects: To develop a framework for best practise manuals; To develop a competence assurance system for forensic science practitioners; To develop guidance on best practise for the validation and implementation of methods; To raise awareness within ENFSI of international quality
Page 100
standards and the process and resources available to support laboratories achieve accreditation; To advise, monitor and support Expert Working Groups in the design, running and assessment of proficiency tests and collaborative exercises; To develop guidance on best practise for the quality management of computers in laboratories. QCC has also ideas about future projects: To develop best practise guidance on sampling; To develop best practise guidance on the measurement of uncertainty; To develop a communication strategy and the QCC contribution to the ENFSI website. The project documentation can be found on the ENFSI website: www.enfsi.org Of these projects, we will discuss the two main ones: Quality Assurance (QA) and Competence Assurance (CA).
science&.justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
MJ Fereday and I Kopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
Figure 2 ENFSI Organisation. The acronyms mean: EULO, European Union Liaison Officer; AESLO, Liaison Officer for AES, where AES stands for co-operation between ENFSI, ASCLD the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors and SMANZFL Senior Managers Australian and New Zealand Forensic Laboratories; QCLG, Quality and Competence Liaison Group.
ENFSl Members (Laboratory Directors)
ENFSI Board
Standing Committee for Quality and Competence QCC
Standing Committee on Expert Working Groups EWGC
Standing Committee for ENFSl Open Activities EAFS
15 Expert Working Groups
European Academy of Forensic Science meetings
I
One issue-one day seminars Multi-lingua project Quality assurance ENFSI has made the following policy commitment: ENFSI wishes to promote consistent and reliable scientific evidence through the whole forensic process from scene incident to court. As one part of this aim it is the policy of ENFSI that all Members should have achieved, or be taking steps towards, EN ISOlEC 17025 compliant accreditation for their laboratory testing activities. In determining this policy ENFSI accepts that progress will be slower in some countries than others for a number of reasons, including differences in national accreditation systems and differences in the operation of legal systems. Where EN ISOEC 17025 compliant accreditation cannot be achieved, ENFSI encourages the use of other Quality management standards with broadly equivalent objectives.
for a quality system of the kind we are discussing since there already was a kind of quality control by the courts. We do not hear that any more. To make it possible to monitor the development, it has been decided that there should be a yearly evaluation of the quality system situation for the ENFSI laboratories. Hopefully, the evaluation will lead not only to better information but to better progress in the advancement against the goal. A questionnaire, that will be used for the evaluation, is presently under construction by the QCC. The situation differs greatly between laboratories in different parts of Europe. According to Sippola [2] a worst case situation can be described as follows: deficiencies in basic instrumentation, e.g. microscopes, balances, chromatographs, computers, etc;
' lack of high-tech instruments, e.g. SEM, bullet speedometer, CE (for DNA) etc;
What is the current QA situation in Europe?
As far as we know at present, only five of the members of ENFSI have an accredited laboratorv. but several are at vresent involved in the tedious work to launch their quality system. l-here is, at present, no reliable information on how far the ENFSI laboratories have come in their efforts towards the aforementioned ENFSI goal. What we have noticed is that there is a rising awareness of the need of a quality system and of accreditation. In some countries it was felt that there was no need
.
,
science&justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
deficiencies in availability of consumables; improper calibration or no calibration of equipment; lack of (reliable) reference materials; deficiencies in participation with proficiency tests; no control over competence of personnel; absence of documentation (personnel registers, methods, soPs, instmment register, maintenance, etc). However, a more common situation is the following:
Page 101
MJ Fereday and IKopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
management is not committed to the quality system; the laboratory does not function according to the quality system; the quality system covers only a part of the activities of the laboratory; familiarisation and training is not systematically documented; no corrective action to address the non-compliances found in the internal audits; insufficient validation;
Figure 3 Overview of the Competence Assurance Project.
'7 ENFSI
CAP-02 Strategy Document of the Competency Assurance Group
measurement uncertainty not estimated or it is unrealistic; no corrective action after deviation from acceptance criteria; proficiency test results are not fully exploited; calibrations have not been performed according to the plan. Sippola stresses that the key factor in the work to get to accreditation is the personnel and that the staff members of the laboratory must carry out all permanent development together. The achievements are entirely up to the laboratory itself since external spoon-feeding does not guarantee any success. But that, of course, does not exclude external support. Estonia is a good example, where financial support from the European Union together with support from the Swedish and Finnish laboratories has moved the laboratory from a bad situation to being near accreditation in a matter of a couple of years. There is certainly a need for more efforts of this type. Competence Assurance One of the objectives under the ENFSI goal that all ENFSI laboratories comply with best practice and international standards for quality and competence assurance is to develop a competence assurance system for Forensic Science practitioners. For this work a project group has been formed. The Competence Assurance Project (CAP) group has members from Sweden, Netherlands, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Germany and England and deals with Competence assurance for ENFSI forensic science practitioners.
Why do we need to be assured of the competence of those who practice forensic science? It is, perhaps, worth remembering another statement made by Paul Kirk, nearly forty years ago. He referred to forensic science as having "all the responsibility of medicine, the intricacy of the law and the universality of science. In as much as it carries higher penalties for error than other professions, it is not a matter to take lightly, nor to trust to luck." We have made great strides in looking at organisational quality through Quality Management Systems and accreditation. However, it is important to remember that accreditation of a laboratory does not, of itself, imply that the staff of that laboratory are competent. We need, now, to extend this approach to individuals and look at personal competence and the concept of common standards of competence for practitioners of forensic science. Why is it important to have such common standards? It is important because the key people in the process are not forensic scientists but the users of forensic science - the law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice systems. They
Page 102
CAP-00 Code of Conduct CAP-01 ENFSI Strategic Plan 2001-2005
CAP-03 Standards of Competence for Practitioners in the Forensic Process
ROLES
CAP-04 Roles of Practitioners in the Forensic Process CAP-06 Assessment Strategy
have the right to expect the same competent performance from forensic scientists irrespective of where that science is practised. We now want to look at how we can define competence and how we can assess whether competence has been achieved. How do we define and recognise competence? Is it about how a person dresses or looks? Is it about qualifications or experience? Is someone who has been doing something for thirty years more competent than someone who has only been doing it for five years? How do we recognise a competent person? We believe that it is impossible to define, and hence recognise, competence in any objective manner in the absence of standards. What is competence and what is it not? Competence is about performing the role, for example of a forensic scientist, competently. It is about demonstrating competence in the workplace and not the classroom, that is to say about actually doing the job. It is not, directly, about qualifications and training. A highly qualified person need not be "occupationally competent". Competence is a mixture of knowledge, skills and their application and behaviours or attitudes. All three are essential for defining competence. Let us look at knowledge - scientific knowledge alone is not enough. It is important to know about forensic science itself and
science&justice Volume 43 No.2 (2003) 99 - 103
MJ Fereday and IKopp European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) and its quality and competence assurance efforts
the forensic process and how to apply scientific knowledge to the solution of forensic problems. As to skills, there are the application of technical skills and the application of "forensic skills", by which we mean assessment of the requirements of a case, interpretation of forensic "data" and report writing. It is the "forensic skills" which are key -to us the modern forensic scientist is a "forensic data processor" with the accent on "data processing" and not "data generation". To complete the competence equation we have behaviours and attitudes. It is possible to be skilled and knowledgeable but if you do not portray the right behaviours and attitudes you can not be classed as competent. We are talking about competence for ENFSI forensic science practitioners and by these, we mean individuals involved in the "forensic process". In CAP we have defined the "forensic process" as a series of discrete steps between the apprehension of a suspect or investigation of a crime and the conclusion of an investigation at a court of law or tribunal. What is the connection between the forensic process as we described it, and competence? All individuals must demonstrate competence at all points in the forensic process. The chain of competence is built on the weakest link. The competence of the forensic scientist can be compromised if individuals working in other parts of the forensic process are not themselves competent. We need to be able to determine if such compromise has taken place. Incompetent evidence collection or incompetent laboratory work results in the wrong results being delivered to the judicial system. In Figure 3 is an overview of the CAP work. The first document mentioned, CAP-00, is a code of conduct for ENFSI Forensic Practitioners. It is of course similar to other documents of this type. We have recently had it sent out for feedback to the ENFSI Members and the Working Groups. The result is that the answers from members are quite positive, but those from some of the experts are very negative. They feel it unnecessary to detail "issues that are self-evident". We do not accept this view and feel that above all it is important that there is a base for discussion on behaviours.
What are the key roles in the forensic process? There are many key roles in the forensic process. For the purpose of the initial phase of our work, the CAP group has defined four roles. These are the Scene of Crime Investigator, the Analyst/Assistant, the Reporting Analyst and the Reporting Scientist. In some organisations a single individual may perform more than one of these roles. There are other roles that will be considered in due course. This is where we are at present. We will now go on to put these documents to the test in a pilot project in two areas - Questioned Documents and Marks. Three or four laboratories will be involved. They are FSS UK, SKL Sweden, NFI the Netherlands and perhaps also a further laboratory. Already, we know that the occupational standards, which detail what an individual practitioner needs to know and understand in order to meet the standards, do not cover the important issues of the history and philosophy of forensic science and they need to be supplemented by some form of knowledge based examination. Work on developing such a system is in progress. The last step in the CA programme is to devise how the certification process shall be undertaken. Here we need to think a lot more before we are ready to suggest a solution. One of the problems is to decide how wide or narrow an expert area shall be. As a starting point for this discussion we have the areas of the Expert Working Groups but when you ask them, several want the area split up into subspecialties. When you ask the managers, they rather want the experts to be certified in a wider area. In conclusion we believe that competence assurance is needed. It is one of the means to move to the goal of the same quality and standard of forensic science irrespective of where it might be practised. We believe the future is not only about competence but also about being able to demonstrate to the world at large that we are competent. We believe the work that we are doing in the Competence Assurance Project Group is laying the foundation for taking competency and its assessment forward across Europe and beyond. References 1
2
CAP-01 details the Goal and Objective mentioned above and CAP-02 gives a general description of the different steps in the certification programme given in this picture.
Kopp I and Sprangers W. History of ENFSI. Z Zagadnld Nauk Sadowych, z, 2002, 203-21 7. Sippola E. Accreditation examples of some laboratories. Z Zagadnien Nauk
Sadowych, z, 2002, 195-198.
3
Fereday MJ. Competence Assurance for ENFSI Forensic Practitioners. Z Zagadnien
Nauk Sadowych. z, 2002, 176-185.
The standards, CAP-03, are occupational standards that are based on the work done here in UK by the UK Forensic Science Sector Committee. For a further discussion of the standards see
PI.
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