This Standard establishes a uniform set of definitions and a process model for the procurement, verification and validation, and life cycle management of forensic technologies. This Standard supports government, legal, and other forensic-related entities in addressing socio-technical, safety, and responsible innovation considerations during procurement, deployment, operation, reporting, disclosing, updating, reassignment, auditing, and retirement of forensic technologies. Within this standard, “forensic technologies” include any system, software, hardware, algorithmic system, statistical model, artificial intelligence system (including agentic AI), database system, socio-technical system, or systems of systems, that is used to generate, interpret, analyze, or present information intended for use in legal, regulatory, investigative, policing, adjudicative proceedings, or inform legal determinations. This standard applies to systems undergoing a procurement cycle, a development and deployment cycle, or already deployed and in use, or reassigned to new uses. These requirements apply regardless of whether the system is commercial, proprietary, open source, internally developed, or modified after procurement. This Standard: ● Defines forensic technologies as engineered systems subject to engineering principles and standards; ● Applies to any system used to generate, support, inform, or influence legal determinations, including systems used for data collection, processing, analysis, interpretation, comparison, or reporting, (e.g., identification, attribution, classification, or risk assessment), whether such use occurs in investigation, expert analysis, or adjudication, and regardless of whether the system's output is introduced as evidence, incorporated into testimony, or used to guide judgments. ● Establishes a procurement, verification and validation, and life cycle management framework for forensic technologies grounded in IEEE Ethically Aligned Design (EAD) principles and IEEE standards. ● Requires integrity-level classification proportional to the potential consequences of system use or failure, including the potential legal, civil, or liberty-related consequences of system outcomes; ● Requires independent verification and validation (IV&V), including technical, managerial, and financial independence from system developers, vendors, and operational laboratories, proportional to the integrity level assigned to the system; and, ● Defines requirements for systems that provide transparency, documentation, reporting, auditing, and stakeholder access necessary to enable independent technical evaluation, legal challenge, and scientific assessment of reliability, fitness for purpose, and justified and evidence-based trust, as well as compliance with applicable disclosure obligations in legal, adjudicative, and public access contexts, throughout procurement and life cycle.
- Standard Committee
- SSIT/SC - Social Implications of Technology Standards Committee
- Joint Sponsors
-
C/S2ESC
- Status
- Active PAR
- PAR Approval
- 2026-06-04
Working Group Details
- Society
- IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology
- Standard Committee
- SSIT/SC - Social Implications of Technology Standards Committee
- Working Group
-
FT/7024 - Forensic Technologies
- IEEE Program Manager
- Malia Zaman
Contact Malia Zaman - Working Group Chair
- Marc Canellas
Other Activities From This Working Group
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