After many months of writing and editing, the Investigative Genetic Genealogy Accreditation Board (IGGAB) has published a draft of the proposed standards for investigative genetic genealogy (IGG). The draft is available for public comment until May 30, 2023. After the close of the public comment period, the Board will review all feedback and consider edits to be made to the standards before they are finalized.
In Summer 2022, the IGGAB launched as an independent non-profit board dedicated to developing a set of professional standards critical to the field of IGG. Members of the board include Ramapo College’s David Gurney, Parabon’s CeCe Moore, DNA Doe Project’s Margaret Press, Solved by DNA’s Michele Kennedy, Carol Rolnick of Rolnik Research, Andrew Hochreiter of Highrider Consulting and Bonnie Bossert from Consulting for Financial Services.
The board members worked with key stakeholders and even critics of IGG to draft the standards before Advisory Board members were asked for their comments. The IGGAB Advisory Board member roster reads like a who’s who of IGG—Ramapo College’s Cairenn Binder, Intermountain Forensics’ Danny Hellwig, Idaho Innocence Project’s Greg Hampikian, The Genetic Genealogist’s Blaine Bettingerm, and more.
The team says the standards will eliminate any potential issues when IGG is applied across different jurisdictions. Instead of jurisdictions creating their own ad hoc standards—resulting in variation—they can adopt these standards and rely on the competence and ethical fortitude of the regulations.
In addition to professional standards, the Board proposes the creation of an accreditation exam, and a subsequent accreditation process for those that pass the exam and agree to the set standard. The Board would then be in charge of maintaining a registry of Accredited Investigative Genetic Genealogists (AIGG).
The standards are split into three sections: proof, competency and ethical.
“The majority of standards here address the core competencies and ethical obligations that, per the Board’s determination, are basic to the field of IGG and thus shall not be altered as the field develops. Yet, given ongoing developments in the field of IGG, some of the standards here contemplate the possibility of adaption,” reads the draft.
The IGG Standard of Proof includes thresholds for DNA and match analysis, investigative analysis and genealogical analysis. For example, the genealogical standard specifies that a probable relationship between subject A and matches must be established with sufficient documentation to show the relationship is likely. This will ensure as few false positives as possible, saving time and resources, and making sure not to alarm those unrelated to the case.
The Competency Standard is the most robust, seeking to ensure genealogical, scientific and personal competency. In addition to genealogical ancestry knowledge, the standard calls for AIGGs to have an understanding of DNA analysis, including: STR, Y-STRs, mtDNA, SNP, atDNA and X-DNA. The standard also includes people-finding and communication skills.
Lastly, the Ethical Standard provides a framework for which types of cases should be worked on, as well as compliance with terms of service and the ever-important confidentiality and privacy. Under this standard, an AIGG should only work on cases where the goal of the investigating agency is to identify human remains or the potential perpetrator of an IGG qualifying crime by providing a lead for the source of unknown crime scene DNA. In the draft, an IGG qualifying crime is described as “a subset of violent felonies consisting of the following crimes: murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, aggravated assault, terrorism, abduction and ongoing threats to the public.”
“As IGG is used in more and more cases, it is essential that the field adopts standards and accreditation that public trust in the technique and competence and accountability for practitioners. Developing the standards has been a year-long effort involving a core group of IGG experts and stakeholders. Our goal is transparency and openness to all voices,” Gurney, president of IGGAB and director of the IGG Center at Ramapo College, told Forensic.