In October 2009, I was selected as the lead consultant by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Laboratory Scientific Section (LSS) to visit various forensic document laboratories and work with a panel of experts. The Expert Group Meeting was held in Vienna, Austria on December 7-10, 2009. Along with the staff of the UNODC LSS, the panel of experts developed a Guide for the development of forensic document examination capacity.

The current Guide is intended to be used by officials in both donor and beneficiary countries in their efforts to design, build and strengthen forensic document examination and intelligence disemination capacities.

The Guide’s intent is to provide a holistic approach to document examination encompassing identity and security documents, and other types of documents without security features.

The Guide is available from:

http://www.unodc.org/documents/scientific/Forensic_Document_Examination_Capacity.pdf