Professionalising the science of Digital Forensics - Policy Logging and audit-able record keeping as a Life-long record

This paper proposes that there is the potential to create the means by which Investigators might enhance the professionalism of their work, their employability (in certain circumstances) and create a framework within which their robust evidential recovery might be complemented. The concept of extending the current practise of incident and investigation record keeping to something akin to an Aeronautical Pilots Logbook: i.e. a record of all matters to do with their flying history. In respect of how that translates in the Digital Investigation realm, a comprehensive record of all elements that might constitute an individual’s record of work and development. Although the natural environment of debating note taking for digital forensic evidential purposes is legal in nature, the origins of this paper relate less to Law than the processes involved in investigation and are a good deal more fundamental than examining forensic artefacts. They also reflect the concepts of professionalising practise and establishing an understanding of what constitutes evidential sufficiency for the purposes of court proceedings, but how this process can be applied to individual development and progress. By taking the rationale that governs the investigative note taking employed by Senior Investigating Officers (SIOs), investigating the most serious and complex of criminal offences there is an opportunity to enhance current contemporaneous note taking and keeping. The object in so doing is twofold: codify current practices and give them a framework that is consistent and well understood; and secondly, to establish the recorded decision making processes to make the auditing of an investigation a much more transparent, obvious and sequential process. Inevitably, there is a need to consider the legal aspects of how note taking has relevance to proceedings and whilst the paper refers to Association of Chief Officers (ACPO) Principles regarding Digital Evidence, the universal application of these concepts should be understood.