Forensic document examination: where to from here?

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ABSTRACT

In late 2022, the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency National Institute of Forensic Science (ANZPAA NIFS) Document Specialist Advisory Group (DocSAG) began a capability mapping project with the broad aim to consider, in the Australian and New Zealand context, forensic document examination: where are we now, and where to from here? Our capability mapping project is based largely on the approach used for the 2022 Forensic Capability Mapping – Firearm Examination Project, led by ANZPAA NIFS. A survey was developed and disseminated to capture information addressing key topics: current and emerging risks, improvement areas, current and future capability, and business continuity. This paper outlines the project process and summarizes key findings of the first round of data collection.

KEYWORDS:

• Forensic document examination
• capability mapping
• capability risks
• emerging issues
• digitization

Acknowledgments

The work presented here is the result of significant involvement of the project working group members, and contribution of various agency staff who completed the capability mapping survey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).