Department of Justice (DOJ) Fiscal Year 2020 Agency Report

1. Please provide a summary of your agency’s activities undertaken to carry out the 

provisions of OMB Circular A-119, “Federal Participation in the Development and Use of 

Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment Activities” and the 

National Technology Transfer and Advance Act (NTTAA). The summary should contain a 

link to the agency’s standards-specific website(s) where information about your agency’s 

standards and conformity assessment related activities are available.

Led by the Attorney General, the Department of Justice (DOJ) comprises more than 40 separate 

component organizations and has approximately 116,000 employees who carry out the missions 

of its components. While the DOJ’s headquarters are in Washington, D.C., it conducts most of its 

work in field locations throughout the country and overseas. The DOJ mission is to enforce the 

law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety 

against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling 

crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and 

impartial administration of justice for all Americans. DOJ is meeting these mission challenges 

through three strategic goals focused on advancing the Department’s priorities and reflecting the 

outcomes the American people deserve. These goals are:

Goal 1: Prevent Terrorism and Promote the Nation’s Security Consistent with the Rule of Law; 

Goal 2: Prevent Crime, Protect the Rights of the American People, and Enforce Federal Law; 

Goal 3: Ensure and Support the Fair, Impartial, Efficient, and Transparent Administration of 

Justice at the Federal, State, Local, Tribal, and International Levels.

DOJ uses standards wherever reasonable, recognizing the importance of Voluntary Consensus 

Standards (VCS) in achieving its mission goals. Implementation of VCS in both Departmental 

systems and those funded by Departmental grants:

• Improves collaboration and cooperation with criminal justice partners and the private sector;

• Makes services, products, and systems development more efficient (including cost and/or 

implementation time savings);

• Ensures equipment and systems are of the highest quality, safe, and effective as well as 

compatible and interoperable;

• Supports innovation, free and fair competition, commerce or trade while avoiding duplication 

of private sector activities;

• Ensures the results of analysis are unbiased and scientifically valid;

• Provides validation that facilities are operating safely, effectively, and are managed in 

accordance with sound principles;

• Enables reuse of technical tools to support multiple projects reduce dependency on custom 

solutions; minimize project risk, and reduce dependency on a too specialized workforce;

• Provides an opportunity to pull communities-of-interest together;
• Allows commercial industry to reduce product development costs and pass those cost savings 

on to the Department;

• Improves procurements, contracting, and grant making functions.

The following summarizes some of DOJ’s standards and conformity assessment activities in 

2020. While not an exhaustive inventory of activities, these three examples demonstrate the 

Department’s active participation in improving and applying standards to deliver the mission.

The Department of Justice participates in the development of forensic science standards by 

sending Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to work as part of the Organization of Scientific Area 

Committees (OSAC) for Forensic Science. More information about the OSAC can be obtained at 

the NIST website at the following link: https://www.nist.gov/forensics/ .

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) continues to operate its NIJ Compliance Testing Program. 

In CY 2020, approximately 90 models of ballistic-resistant body armor were submitted for 

testing. In addition to initial testing, follow-up inspection and testing was conducted on 

approximately 130 models complying with NIJ Standard 0101.06, Ballistic Resistance of Body 

Armor. NIJ continues to participate in ASTM Committee E54 Homeland Security Applications 

to develop standardized methods and practices for ballistic and mechanical testing of life safety 

equipment as well as standards for testing law enforcement public order personal protective 

equipment. Through ANSI, NIJ also supports ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 37 Biometrics, which focuses 

on the standardization of generic biometric technologies pertaining to human beings to support 

interoperability and data interchange among applications and systems. More about NIJ’s 

standards and conformity assessment activities can be found at: https://nij.gov/standards .

The Department’s Office of the Chief Information Officer actively applies the ISO/IEC 20000-

1:2018 and ISO 27001:2013 standards for the delivery of IT and information security services 

and during 2020 maintained ISO certification via formal audit for continuing compliance with 

these standards. Application of these standards has significantly improved delivery of OCIO 

enterprise IT and cybersecurity services, ensuring the continuous evaluation of service 

performance and use of standard practices as defined by criteria well-recognized across industry 

and government.

2. Please list the government-unique standards (GUS) your agency began using in lieu of 

voluntary consensus standards during FY 2020. Please note that GUS which are still in 

effect from previous years should continue to be listed, thus the total number in your 

agency's report will include all GUS currently in use (previous years and new as of this 

FY): 0