This assessment tool can be used to evaluate an organization’s culture of biosafety, biosecurity, and responsible conduct and aims to adapt the nuclear safety and security culture model to the biological domain. This resource consists of a series of surveys administered to laboratorians, laboratory supervisors, managers, and other organization members and a tool for evaluating responses. Survey questions can be found in the PDF document. A tool for visualizing and evaluating survey responses is provided as an Excel spreadsheet. The authors recommend that trained, experienced individuals conduct the survey with the participation of subject matter experts in psychology, sociology, and organizational behavior as well as active engagement from personnel at all levels of the organization. 

The tool was created by the International Working Group on Strengthening the Culture of Biosafety, Biosecurity, and Responsible Conduct in the Life Sciences. The International Working Group includes representatives of governments, academia, industry, professional and international organizations, including but not limited to INTERPOL, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE). The working group was convened by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Many of the survey questions were created by the working group but many others were adapted from other sources including the Biosecurity Self-Scan Toolkit and the Vulnerability Scan developed by Dutch Biosecurity Office, an Analytical Approach: Biosafety and Biosecurity Oversight Framework, and other resources included in this library. As of January 2021, this tool is a work-in-progress, and if you would like to submit feedback on this resource and/or participate in the collective efforts of the working group to improve it, contact Dr. Dana Perkins at: dana.perkins@hhs.gov.