FY21 Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grants Program - Formula

South Dakota intends to utilize the award to help with the foundation of improving the lab services. The SDFL provides services to all law enforcement in South Dakota, including local, state, federal, and tribal law enforcement. This year, our laboratory hopes to utilize this award to update equipment and update our users pre-logging LIMS system to be web-based. This will allow more userfriendly options as it relates to using our LIMS system throughout the state. Currently, our firearms section maintains all the casework for both North and South Dakota. While the North Dakota lab does not have firearms examiners performing casework, the SDFL is helping by completing all their casework. We are looking to replace an old microscope with a newer model with better optics as well as purchasing two drones for our crime scene reconstruction in our growing firearms section. Our fingerprint section would like to obtain an imaging system for current equipment so we can take images in house from some items from which we cannot currently obtain images. In addition to updated equipment, Coverdell funding would be used for the annual maintenance for our BEAST LIMS system. The SDFL is looking to eventually go web-based with this program to make this more user-friendly for our agencies within South Dakota. We would like to update our prelog system to have this web-based function. This will allow agencies to easily log their information before it is submitted to our agency to be more efficient during evidence check-in processes.