Digital evolution of forensic methods for investigating criminal offences in the field of official activity in Ukraine

The purpose of the study was to analyse the capabilities of digital forensics in investigating official offences by integrating international standards and forensic-by-design concepts with Ukrainian criminal procedural legislation. A comparative legal analysis of international and Ukrainian standards of digital forensics revealed a systemic gap between technical standards and procedural and judicial practice, where courts practically do not articulate the requirements for forensically correct handling of digital evidence. The systematic classification of digital traces by types of official offences in criminal legislation allowed systematising specific sources of origin, types of digital traces, and typical threats to the integrity of evidence for each element of official offence in the context of large-scale digitalisation of the public sector. The case study method was used to examine the judicial practice of Ukraine, the United States of America, and Germany regarding the use of digital evidence in cases of official offences, which made it possible to establish the absence of references to international standards of digital forensics in the motivational parts of Ukrainian court decisions and to identify gaps in the procedural design of electronic evidence that make it impossible to verify the authenticity and integrity in accordance with the requirements of ISO/IEC 27037:2012. A four-block algorithm for the digital forensics methodology for investigating official offences related to official forgery (Article 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) was developed, which includes forensically oriented initial recording of the digital situation, identification of relevant sources of digital evidence, forensically correct acquisition and analysis, and presentation of evidence in court with compliance with the procedures of the chain of custody. The practical significance of the research results lies in the possibility of the use by the legislator to amend criminal procedural legislation, by law enforcement agencies to create specialised units in the field of investigating official offences using digital forensics, as well as by higher education institutions to introduce relevant educational components into legal education