Scan this QR code to get bonus info on accred­it­ing bod­ies for ISO 17025

In our first post we answered the ques­tion:  What is ISO 17025?

The next post we answered the ques­tion:  Why do we need stan­dards? Why ISO 17025 and pol­icy, pro­ce­dures and instruc­tions matter.

Today’s post answers the ques­tion:  Why is ISO 17025 so impor­tant to us in foren­sic science?

Why is ISO 17025 so important?

It is extremely impor­tant for two major rea­sons:  first, ISO 17025 pro­vides for min­i­mum thresh­olds of accept­able prac­tices for those engaged in test­ing and cal­i­bra­tion[i]^,[ii]; and sec­ond, because more than likely, your lab­o­ra­tory is not ISO 17025 com­pli­ant, but it soon might be.  On March 31, 2009, a water­shed moment in the mod­ern prac­tice of Foren­sic Sci­ence occurred when ASCLD/LAB[iii] announced that it would no longer accredit lab­o­ra­to­ries through its Legacy pro­gram.  Instead, it now offers ASCLD/LAB Inter­na­tional which it mar­kets as ISO 17025 Plus[iv].   As Legacy pro­grams are forced to become ISO 17025 com­pli­ant or risk los­ing accred­i­ta­tion, the crim­i­nal law prac­ti­tioner, if prop­erly pre­pared, can seize upon this oppor­tu­nity to solve some of the prob­lems out­lined supra.  As crime lab­o­ra­to­ries come on board with ISO 17025, it will force the oth­er­wise “wild wild west” and “any­thing goes” styles that are inher­ent and endemic in cer­tain dis­ci­plines within foren­sic sci­ence to become more sci­en­tific. This is to not only include ana­lyt­i­cal mea­sure­ment based foren­sic sci­ence dis­ci­plines such as blood alco­hol mea­sure­ment and mass mea­sure­ments, but also other para-forensic dis­ci­plines such as pat­tern recog­ni­tion, foren­sic firearm and tool­mark analy­sis, fin­ger­print analy­sis, and other sim­i­lar lab­o­ra­tory con­ducted tests.

The time­frame that makes this arti­cle so rel­e­vant now is that as ASCLD/LAB has decided to adopt ISO 17025 and no longer offers its Legacy accred­it­ing pro­gram all Legacy pro­gram lab­o­ra­to­ries must become ISO 17025 com­pli­ant lab­o­ra­to­ries no later than March 31, 2014 or on April 1, 2014 they will find them­selves unac­cred­ited.  The trans­for­ma­tion from ASCLD/LAB Legacy pro­gram to ISO 17025 com­pli­ant can be a long one or a remark­ably short one depend­ing upon where any par­tic­u­lar crime lab­o­ra­tory is at the begin­ning of the process[v]. A require­ment for ASCLD/LAB to grant accred­i­ta­tion based on ISO 17025 com­pli­ance is that for the six months pre­ced­ing the ulti­mate inspec­tion of the lab­o­ra­tory it must be in com­pli­ance with ISO 17025. Even before the appli­ca­tion can be made to ASCLD/LAB, a full inter­nal audit must be com­pleted with all forms of ISO 17025 com­pli­ance in place. There­fore, at a max­i­mum if a lab­o­ra­tory wishes to be ISO 17025 com­pli­ant it must have the struc­ture and the prac­tices of ISO 17025 in place no later than Octo­ber 30, 2014.

[i] While accred­i­ta­tion does not equate to auto­matic qual­ity in results, it means that a lab adheres to some sort of exter­nal Qual­ity Man­age­ment Sys­tem (QMS).  How worth­while that QMS is ver­sus what is nec­es­sary in the gen­eral sci­en­tific com­mu­nity to insure true results is debat­able.  Just deter­min­ing whether or not a lab is accred­ited and by whom is the very begin­ning of assess­ing qual­ity of the reported and alleged test result.  It should be remem­bered that these stan­dards are min­i­mum expres­sions of accept­able prac­tices.  A lab­o­ra­tory could and should decide to employ greater stan­dards than the min­i­mum to insure qual­ity of the results issued.

[ii] Sec­tion 1.4, the For­ward and the Intro­duc­tion con­tain use­ful state­ments that estab­lish the goals and the scope of the standard.

[iii] ASCLD/LAB is the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Crime Lab­o­ra­tory Direc­tors Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Board.  It can be found on the inter­net at www.ascld-lab.org.

[iv] A list of ASCLD/LAB accred­ited Legacy and Inter­na­tional Pro­grams can be found at http://www.ascld-lab.org/accreditedlabs.html

[v] ISO does not offer accred­i­ta­tion itself. The fol­low­ing is an alpha­bet­i­cal list of pri­mary ISO accred­it­ing bod­ies and com­prise the major­ity of the sources for grants of ISO accred­i­ta­tion:  A2LA — Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion; ACLASS — Assured Cal­i­bra­tion Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Select Ser­vices; APLAC — Asia Pacific Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Coöper­a­tion; EA — Euro­pean Coöper­a­tion for Accred­i­ta­tion; IAS — Inter­na­tional Accred­i­ta­tion Ser­vice; ILAC — Inter­na­tional Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Coöper­a­tion; ILAA — Inter­na­tional Lab­o­ra­tory Assess­ment & Accred­i­ta­tion; L-A-B Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Bureau; NACLA — National Coöper­a­tion for Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion; NVLAP — National Vol­un­tary Lab­o­ra­tory Accred­i­ta­tion Pro­gram; SCC — Stan­dards Coun­cil of Canada.  ASCLD/LAB is a sec­ondary or affil­i­ated party with ILAC.