Quality Documents

Quality Documents Program Expansion

In the fall of 2005, the NFSTC distributed a handbook publication was distributed at no-cost to all public crime laboratories. Introduction to Accreditation for Forensic Labs (2nd Edition) by Murray Malcolm and Harold Peel is an excellent primer on accreditation and ISO/IEC 17025:2005.

As a further expansion of the Quality Documents program, the NFSTC is planning to purchase and distribute copies of ISO/IEC 17025:2005 to public crime laboratories.

Quality Documents Program

• About the Program
• History
• Introduction
• Program Structure
• Accessing the Documents
  • Download All Documents
  • Online Access
• Stakeholder Comment

Note: For technical support and feedback regarding Quality Documents:
contact the NFSTC Webmaster: Jane Smith - Jane.Smith@nfstc.org

At the request of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board and through a Cooperative Agreement with the National Institute of Justice, the NFSTC has undertaken the development of a Quality Documents Program.

Integral parts of a quality system include the policies, procedures and protocols that guide staff members through the maze of intricacies that comprise a forensic laboratory. The development of a laboratory quality system enhances the validity of testing results and conclusions.

The Quality Documents program contains templates, document examples and reference materials such as a Quality Assurance Manual, Operational Policies and a variety of forms.

These documents are easily adaptable for individual laboratories in the development of their quality system and may have applications for laboratories with existing quality systems as a method of review of their procedures and protocols.

Subject matter experts, comprised of members of the Association of Forensic Quality Assurance Managers (AFQAM) and the Quality Manager of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB), assembled to review and discuss the proposed program. This panel reviewed the program for conciseness and applicability providing intensive scrutiny and direction.

Click here to review samples of documents from the Quality Documents program.

History

In late 2002, the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors /Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB © ) requested assistance from the National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC) and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) regarding the development of a Quality Documents Program. The program objective is to create a standardized set of documents for use by laboratories in developing or improving their quality system.

As a result of this request and as part of the NIJ - NFSTC Cooperative Agreement (2000-RC-CX-K001), the NFSTC included a program request to develop a Quality Manual Template. The Quality Documents program was designed to provide an easy-to-use template that would assist any laboratory in the creation of a quality manual that would meet accreditation standards. The project was approved by NIJ.

David Sylvester, Deputy Director Scientific Operations, who began employment with the NFSTC in early February, 2003, was designated as the Program Manager for this project. Under his direction, a list of documents to be included in the program was assembled.

In late February, 2003 the document list was distributed to volunteer project members from the Association of Forensic Quality Assurance Managers (AFQAM) and to John Neuner from ASCLD/LAB©. During the spring of 2003 templates and reference documents were developed. In June, a panel of subject matter experts was assembled to review and discuss the proposed documents. After two days of intensive review and discussion, the panel developed and agreed upon a final format.

Members of the panel included:

Deborah Friedman, Broward Sheriff’s Office Crime Laboratory

• representing a county laboratory

Kacey Heckman , New Hampshire State Police

• representing a one lab state system

Charlie Curtis, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation

• representing a multi lab state system

Louisa Newbury, Centre of Forensic Sciences

• representing a large metropolitan lab

John Neuner

• representing ASCLD/LAB©

John Simms, San Diego Police Department

• invited to represent a city lab (unable to attend)

Introduction

The development of a laboratory quality system enhances the validity of testing results and conclusions. Integral parts of a quality system include the organization’s policies, procedures and protocols, which guide staff members through the maze of intricacies that comprise a forensic laboratory. At the request of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board and through a Cooperative Agreement with the National Institute of Justice, the National Forensic Science Technology Center has undertaken the development of a Quality Documents Program.

The goal of the program is to provide a toolkit of generic quality documents to be used by laboratories in the development and implementation of a quality system. The program has been reviewed by a panel of Quality Assurance Managers for scope, accuracy and applicability.

Document examples and reference materials such as a Quality Manual, Operational Policies as well as a variety of forms are provided for review. These documents are easily adaptable to individual laboratory needs and have applications for laboratories with existing quality systems as a method of review of their procedures and protocols. Document examples are provided only as general references for use by a laboratory in the development of their own materials.

The Quality Documents program is centered on a master reference document that functions as a guide and contains links to all of the reference documents.

Program Structure

The structure described below pertains to the file structure in the downloaded version of the program. The online version contains the same content as the downloaded version, but the structure is not the same.

The Quality Documents program consists of:

1. Two introductory documents containing information about the program and general instructions

• 1_Quality Documents Program Summary
• 2_Quality Documents Introduction and Instructions

2. A reference guide document, which serves as the program’s master document. It contains hyperlinks to all other reference documents in the program.

   3_Quality Documents Reference Guide

3. A folder entitled Document References, which contains approximately ninety (90) documents.
• These documents are hyperlinked from the Reference Guide.
• At the end of each of these reference documents, a hyperlink back to the Reference Guide’s Table of Contents is provided.
• To provide access to additional references on related subject matter, some of the documents within the Document Reference folder are hyperlinked to each other.
• All of the documents were created in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel and therefore require those applications to display.