Texas Forensic Science Commission
The OSAC Registry is a repository of high-quality, technically sound published and proposed standards for forensic science. These written documents define minimum requirements, best practices, standard protocols and other guidance to help ensure that the results of forensic analysis are valid, reliable and reproducible.
All the standards on this registry have passed a rigorous technical and quality review by OSAC members, including forensic science practitioners, research scientists, statisticians and legal experts. OSAC encourages the forensic science community to implement these published and proposed standards.
The OSAC Registry includes two types of standards:
- Published standards. These are fully developed standards that have been published by a standards developing organization (SDO).
- OSAC Proposed Standards. These are new or revised standards that have been drafted by OSAC and sent to an SDO to be further developed and published. These proposed standards have undergone the same rigorous technical review as the published standards on this Registry. To help fill the standards gap during the time it takes for an SDO to complete the standards development process, OSAC encourages the forensic science community to implement these high-quality proposed standards. An OSAC Proposed Standard may be revised during the SDO development process, and once available, the SDO published standard will replace the OSAC Proposed Standard on the Registry.
This section of the database provides information to the public regarding which OSAC Registry Standards have been implemented by laboratories accredited by the Texas Forensic Science Commission. The information provided here is maintained by the laboratories included in this database.
You may access the OSAC Registry and learn more about standards development here: https://www.nist.gov/organization-scientific-area-committees-forensic-science/osac-registry