NAS Recommendation 13: Oh, By The Way…

The last recommendation of the NAS Report addresses the directive that the committee was given to “examine the role of the forensic community in the homeland security mission.” In other words, please describe for the members of congress how forensic scientists- at the local, state, and federal level- fit into the grand scheme of things in the event of a national emergency.

Let me remind you of the AFIS situation. AFIS are the many varied networks of Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems that don’t talk to each other, even at the local level. But congress would like to know how the country’s forensic scientists are going to work together in the event that they need to be mobilized when the nation is under attack. Who exactly is going to mobilize them is not quite clear.

The NAS Committee, in its usual way, outlines a couple of “requirements” (read: obstacles) necessary to getting the kind of coordination that would be necessary for successful “interface” between federal homeland security agencies and the forensic science community:

1. The establishment of good working relationships among federal, state, and local jurisdictions.
   How is that warm-fuzzy relationship building going between the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, etc. since they screwed up the intelligence on 9/11? Everything all worked out there? Right. Maybe WikiLeaks has some footage of agents doing trust falls…
2. The creation of strong security programs to protect data transmittals across jurisdictions.
   I refer you back to the AFIS situation. The federal AFIS systems can’t even talk to each other.
3. The development of additional training for forensic scientists and crime scene investigators.
   The keyword here is “development.” In that development is the assessment of skill levels of the nation’s forensic scientists and crime scene investigators.
4. The promulgation of contingency plans that will promote efficient team efforts on demand.
   See numbers 1 and 2.

In other words, the feds have got a long way to go yet on this one. But this isn’t the actual recommendation. This is list is just what would be required to implement the recommendation. The committee stresses that they weren’t tasked with reviewing homeland security policy.

The recommendation is:

Congress should provide funding to the National Institute of Forensic Science (NIFS) to prepare, in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, forensic scientists and crime scene investigators for their potential roles in managing and analyzing evidence from events that affect homeland security, so that maximum evidentiary value is preserved from these unusual circumstances and the safety of these personnel is guarded. This preparation also should include planning and preparedness (to include exercises) for the interoperability of local forensic personnel with federal counterterrorism organizations.

So… as soon as the feds get all their problems worked out and we get all the funding we need and everything else is fixed… it should all work just fine.

But I do like the fact that the NAS Committee, as usual, did a very good job in pointing out the work that everyone needs to do in order to make the whole thing work without getting bogged down in the how’s and why’s.

That is a hallmark of this report that many have not appreciated: the committee was given an enormous task, they laid plenty of responsibility where it needed to be placed (they didn’t lay down the hammer hard enough sometimes, quite honestly), and then made recommendations to provide funding and resources so that, presumably, the responsible parties would act like adults and begin to make the necessary repairs to the system themselves.

There’s a novel idea.

See all NAS posts.