Fourth Annual DNA Grantees' Workshop
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
AFTERNOON SESSION
NIJ Programs and DNA Funding Opportunities (Part II)
Lisa Forman, Moderator
Biography
DR. FORMAN: I want to start out by giving you a little bit of an overview about our budget as a whole, because this is the first year we've broken over the $100 million mark. That barrier has been broken mostly because of DNA, so I just want to talk about what we've done to clean up the money and get it out the door this year.
We have two basic program areas: We have the research and development program, which is why you're all here, and we also have a general forensics program. It's a very small program that funds other non-DNA forensic areas. Lois Tully is the program manager of that.
Lois, are you going to be talking about that at all today?
DR. TULLY: Yes, a little.
DR. FORMAN: We also have our DNA research and development program, for which Lois also is the program manager. I think that she'll be talking extensively about that, or as extensively as the 5 minutes that each of us get can allow.
We also have a number of initiatives that were born out of the 9–11 disasters, including some additional meetings to develop some lessons-learned deliverables and also some intramural deliverables, including an interagency agreement between the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the National Center for Biotechnology Information.
We also have been supporting conferences such as this, and one of the things that we learned early on was that to support this conference we have to plan it a year in advance. That's why you'll see that we already have this meeting identified in our budget line for next year. I assume that it will be held at about the same time next year, but I'm not sure where. That will be announced later, but I know everybody likes it here, so we'll try to keep it here.
We also have our non-DNA grantees meeting. Those of you who attend the national meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS) might notice on the program that the non-DNA grantees meeting actually starts 2 days before the AAFS meeting. We welcome all of you to attend, and if you could, please let Lois know that you're coming. The room is, generally speaking, quite small, so we have to make sure that there is enough room to house the researchers who are attending.
We also have a variety of technical working groups that we support, including the Attorney General's Initiative on DNA Laboratory Backlogs (AGID-Lab) Working Group that NIJ director Sarah Hart spoke of yesterday. We also have an ongoing collaboration or cooperative agreement with the Smith Alling Lane Group, who is putting some real data to some of the questions that were raised by AGID-Lab.
As we've heard mentioned a couple of times today, we also have our Forensic Resource Network (FRN). FRN is a network, at least at this point, of four institutions that collaborate to develop products and deliverables for the forensic community. Some of the deliverables include things like publishing the results of massive validation studies between partners of the forensic community and making smaller, easier validation kits available to the forensic community so that when a new technology comes online, each one doesn't have to recreate the wheel in their own environment. Ultimately, a number of ideas have been kicked around by FRN. Basically, it's a responsive organization, and it wants to hear ideas from you. Carl Selavka is the program manager for FRN at NIJ.
Now I want to talk to you a little more about the improvement programs. Actually, I'm not going to be saying very much. Janelle [Buchanan] and Thurston [Bryant] will be talking about these programs. They've left me with two to talk about: the DNA backlog reduction program and the crime laboratory improvement program. The DNA Backlog Reduction Program had $40 million authorized for it this year—$15 million for convicted offenders, $20 million for no-suspect casework, and $5 million for the National Forensic Science Improvement Act or the Paul Coverdell Improvement Act.
The crime laboratory improvement program was funded this year to the tune of $35 million, of which $28 million was in earmarks. The remaining fundings are being used or have been used to support the best applications that we received for crime laboratory improvements. We had $3 million left from last year's earmarks. As it turned out, we put out an open solicitation inviting people in any area of crime laboratory improvement to apply, but they could only apply for up to a maximum of $250,000. It was their job to explain to the people reviewing the proposals how the money would change turnaround times in labs, enhance resources, and generally give better forensic services.
We received 133 proposals totaling more than $30 million. Some of them were so creative and wonderful that they made you just want to weep. There were things like, if I only had $16,000 to buy another microscope, then, instead of each of my people having to readjust the microscope every time they looked at some sort of an analysis, everybody would have their own microscope, and I would save more than one person per day time.
There were some very, very, very hard choices, and without reservation, we were able the fund almost all of the proposals that received recommendations. The money left over was used to fund number one priorities from previous years, so we didn't even bother to release another solicitation because it would have been such a bad tease.
During the past 2 years, the Coverdell Act—a formula grant—has put forth $10 million in $5 million increments. The money is given to State administrators and must be used for accreditation. The requirement is that States must have a forensic plan that includes some notion of when accreditation will be gained, if not accredited already, and how the funds will be used.
The program is overseen by Nick Vigiani in the Investigative and Forensic Sciences division of NIJ. Last year, I think 32 States—out of the 50 States and 7 districts/territories eligible for funding—applied.
The most amount of money that any State got was about $100,000. The least amount was about $23,000. It's based on population size and crime rate. It's a very straightforward formula and very easy to apply for. For those of you in States that did not apply, you probably should talk to your State administrator because that money can be used for a variety of things. We focused the funds on training because most crime labs tell us is that training is the first thing to get cut. Ultimately, labs want to receive money for training in this manner so that it can't be taken away.
The same amount of money is available this year. There is also a small discretionary pot available only to discretionary-eligible States, which is a State that has a little bit worse-than-average crime rate. I believe that solicitation is up on the Web right now. You should tell your State administrators to apply for it, and the funding should come with reasonably little shuttling between you and NIJ.