AUTHOR
Mary J. Granger and Joyce Currie Little

ABSTRACT

In a time of rapid technological and social change, business organizations must help their employees develop a new appreciation of how social and ethical values are being shaped and challenged by evolving information technologies. Many ethical and social conflicts have arisen around the advanced information technology used today. The emerging technologies continue to create situations not previously encountered. There are numerous risks facing corporations involved in the use of computing technology. Leaders of organizations looking ahead to assess the impact of technological changes can try to prepare their employees for the future. This paper addresses the urgent need for individuals in corporations to become more knowledgeable about computing technologies and their impact.

AUTHOR
Tom Gough

ABSTRACT

The starting point for this paper was an earlier paper, given at the 1995 Annual Conference of the Ergonomics Society (Gough 1995), on the implications for job design of health and safety legislation. The argument advanced was that designers of information systems appear to be largely unaware of the issues that need to be addressed in the information systems development process if the requirements of health and safety legislation are to be properly satisfied. It was noted that there was a high degree of correlation between the content of the UK Health and Safety Regulations and widely recognised job design principles which suggested that meeting the legislative requirements would produce better systems. It was further pointed out that the legislation covered the personal obligations of employees in relation to the health and safety of themselves and others in the workplace. The paper concluded by suggesting that legislation provides “^E. information systems designers with an opportunity to justify the initial additional design costs of turning good intentions on improving information systems design into good quality operational information systems ^E” (Gough, 1995).

The discussion which followed the presentation of the paper concentrated on the conclusion put forward in the paper and on the above quotation in particular. Two interrelated assumptions were shared by the several members of the audience who participated in the discussion and by the paper^Rs author. The first was that stated in the paper i.e. the initial costs of good design are higher than the initial costs of poor design. The second assumption flowed from the first which was that since initial costs were higher it was essential to have management commitment to good design before any significant improvement was achievable. It was agreed by all parties that using legislation as the lever to gain support was unlikely to be effective, especially as provisos on practicality in the framing of the regulations would provide unwilling managers with a convincing negative response.

This paper explores the premise that better (or worse) job design is in the hands of those engaged in the detail of information systems development and argues that if no job design policy exists it is possible for information systems designers to implement one without overt management support by making good job design a key element in their personal approach to information systems development. Once it becomes part of ^Qthe way we do things around here^R it will cease to be an issue in the cost equation or on management^Rs agenda.

The practicality and legitimacy of this ^Qdoing of good by stealth^R will be examined which will draw on results from an experiment in health and safety practice which is, as yet, unpublished.

The conclusion is likely to be tentative and may well challenge some of the orthodox thinking on information systems development.

AUTHOR
David H. Gleason

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the ethics related to Information Technology (IT) project planning. It argues that many IT project failures can be avoided through an informed, comprehensive and ethical planning methodology. It offers specific planning methods to anticipate and eliminate ethical problems. Interdisciplinary perspectives include philosophical ethics, information science and business case studies.

The paper first explores the ethical problems that arise when IT projects are poorly planned. Some industry statistics and a series of short case studies are then presented to provide concrete examples of the issues. A practical analysis of incomplete project planning methods demonstrates some of the reasons why projects go awry. Finally, the paper presents a methodology for project planning to avoid such problems. Note that project management also raises ethical issues, but those issues are outside the scope of this paper.

The paper begins by arguing that poor planning leads to wasted resources: Systems fail to meet expectations resulting in ethical disputes and legal battles. Effective planning can prevent these problems, but since the information industry is young, has unrecognized professional codes and limited professional certification, there exist few widely accepted IT project planning standards. In the absence of such standards, IT professionals must employ their own methods. Not using such methods, or using weak methods, demonstrates professional incompetence, an ethical lapse that leads to poor decisions, failure to serve stakeholders and ultimately to unusable or faulty IT applications.

Up to 75% of major software projects in the U.S. are either cancelled before completion, or are operating failures. As many as 85% of IT projects are delivered behind schedule. Project planning is often neglected or overlooked.

Case study summaries include the Denver Airport baggage handling software, a substance abuser case management system, a magazine subscription fulfillment system, and the NASA Space Shuttle software systems.

The paper provides a list of areas in which insufficient or ineffective planning can induce ethical problems. For example: Underestimating the amount of time a project will take not only costs money but can compromise organizational operation. This leads to questions of forthrightness, and whether the planners were competent and ethical in their initial approach. As another example: A poorly structured planning process will produce a system with design flaws. Such flaws can compromise sensitive data, produce inaccurate results, undermine quality control and cause accidents. In the worst cases, life or death decisions may be made based on erroneous information.

Analysis demonstrates several reasons why IT projects fail, including: failure to consider planning at all; faulty planning methodologies, or misapplied methodologies; lack of thoroughness; inattention to stakeholders and their needs; poor estimating; unfamiliar or changing technology; lack of required technical skills; poor communication and teamwork; ineffective time management; inattention to the ethical implications of projects or the resulting systems. An effective methodology for IT project planning has several components: stakeholder analysis, documentation of desired outcomes, establishment of an effective project team, work breakdown, estimating, contingency planning and planning for change management.

Stakeholder analysis must represent not only all affected parties, but the ethical effects the resulting system will have on them. Documentation of desired outcomes both imposes a discipline on the planning process, and provides a clear criteria to determine project completion. A project team must include the right people and also establish their working relationships. Work breakdown must be detailed and thorough. Projects should usually be divided into sequential phases, which break down into smaller and smaller tasks until realistic time estimates can be made. Estimating must be thorough and agreed to by all stakeholders. Contingency planning is needed to address areas of potential project failure. Finally there needs to be a process to manage project changes.

A five-phase planning methodology is presented which breaks IT projects down into 1) definition; 2) needs analysis; 3) design; 4) development and 5) implementation. A structured set of questions is provided to help raise the ethical issues that should be applied during project planning.

AUTHOR
Luigi Gerardi

ABSTRACT

Nowadays in Italy is absolutely necessary a specific Data Medical Protection act after the issuing of the italian Data Protection Act. Italy is lacking a law which carry out the principles of the Council of Europe Recomandation R (97)5. Particularly, there is a pressing need of a regulation about Genetic Data collection and processing. The Recomandation states the following:

• Genetic Data should only be used for preventive processing or diagnosis, data subject processing, scientific research, or to allow the data subject to take a free and informed decision on these matters (see §4.7).
• For purposes other than those cited above, the Genetic Data collection and processing should be only permitted for health reasons and in particular to avoid any serious prejudice to the health of the data subject or third parties (see §4.9).
• However, the processing of Genetic Data in order to predict illness may be allowed in cases of overriding interest and subject to appropriate safeguards defined by law (see §4.9).

The points at issues are the following:

1. In Italy at moment there are no “safeguards defined by law” about Genetic Data: the Italian Data Protection Authority could allow that data processing for reasons of public health or to avoid serious prejuduce to the health of third parties without the consent of the data subject.
2. The word “health”, in our opinion, is vague if related to genetic data processing for preventive treatment or for scientific research. For instance, it is not clear when data collected for scientific research or public health should be anonymous and not be disclosed.
3. According to the Recomandation above mentioned, the data subject shall informed about the existence of files containing his/her medical data and information about the type of data collected (see §5.1). Also information of the subject shall be appropriate and adapted to circumstances (see §5.3).

Particularly related to the point 3, we raise the following questions:

• What is the range of the right to know about the existence of own Genetic Data?
• The data subject should be informed about the possibility of an unexpected findings (see §5.4); this event itself , in our opinion, could cause serious harm to the subject’s health.
• Moreover, there is the (adopted or test-tube) son’s right to know his own hereditary characteristics.

All these problems coming out from the Recomandation of Council of Europe are relevants for draw up the future Italian Data Medical Privacy Act, also considering the implementation of Data Medical Cards in Europe. In the same way we have a data interchange in the SIS (Informative Schengen’s System) where is available personal data for Police all around European common borders, we can imagine an analogous system for Personal Medical Data which will serve for research, public health, and emergency reasons. Then every nation which want participate to this European data health trade will need a Data Medical Privacy Act. Aware the progress made in medical science and developments in information technology that Act have to assured the rights and fundamental freedoms of the individuals, particularly the right to privacy.

AUTHOR
Luciano Floridi

PUBLISHED IN
ETHICOMP Journal Vol 1 Issue 1

ABSTRACT

The paper is based on (a) a moderate version of Walter Maner’s thesis (computer ethics as a new branch of ethics concerned with original situations and issues brought about by the information society), and a radicalisation of (b) Jacek Sojka’s, Simon Rogerson’s and Terrell Ward Bynum’s interpretation of computer ethics as information ethics (IE). In the paper it is argued that (i) if premises (a) and (b) are accepted, then IE could be fruitfully seen as a particular case of “environmental” ethics or ethics of the infosphere (IE); that (ii) the newly emerging field of IE requires a theoretical foundation; that (iii) the theoretical foundation needs to concern the essential concepts involved in the ethical analysis; and that (iv) any consistent IE position that may be developed in the future will need to endorse two IE principles: one ontological, concerning the nature of an agent in the infosphere (the principle of uniformity), from which a proper interpretation of the concept of responsibility depends; and the other methodological, concerning the nature of action in the infosphere (the principle of reflexivity), from which a correct understanding of the systemic nature of IE depends.

AUTHOR
Patrick Feng

ABSTRACT

Listening to the media today, one gets the sense that the “information revolution” is a fait accompli: computers have revolutionized our world whether we like it or not, privacy is being eroded by the creation of global databases, and the future holds even more surprises about what technology will do to us. The message seems to be that information technologies produce inevitable and uncontrollable effects for society. Thus, for example, a recent issue of Forbes suggests that there is “lively debate as to whether surveillance technology will bring on Orwell’s 1984, …or constitute a giant step toward human freedom. Either way, the damned thing is practically here. Let the chips fall where they may.”

This kind of technological fatalism — the belief that society is no longer in control of technology — has important implications for those interested in computer ethics. For if technology is out of our control, what is the point of discussing ethics? The question would seem to be moot since we are powerless to shape technology anyway. This viewpoint, then, is a barrier to the inclusion of ethics in the design of information systems. I argue that this barrier creates two major obstacles to meaningful dialogue between ethicists and those who design information technologies: one has to do with how computer professionals view technology, and the other has to do with how they view themselves.

In the first case, technology is viewed by much of the public as an “autonomous force” beyond our control. Accordingly, ethical discussions are dismissed as being impractical or even irrelevant. The quote from Forbes is typical: by speaking about surveillance technology as if it were inevitable, the article forecloses debate on the ethics of this technology. In this paper I examine how other privacy-invasive technologies have been characterized in this same way, and suggest that this characterization limits people’s choices in terms of the development of technology.

A closely related belief is that technology is “intrinsically” good, and hence ethics is besides the point. After all, if technology is predisposed to do good, any attempt to control technology by, say, defining what an ethical system is, could be interpreted as “interference” in the natural logic and evolution of technology. Debates about the moral and political nature of the Internet are instructive: early on, the Internet was seen by many as being “inherently” democratic, implying that if people only ensured the growth of the Net, they would see the growth of democracy as well. Efforts to regulate the Net were thus interpreted as efforts to suppress democracy. In retrospect, we can see that this view was too simplistic, and I would argue that the presupposition of “Internet democracy” stifled efforts to talk about ethics in this new medium.

Taken together, these views constrain computer professionals’ understanding of what ethical computing means. If, for example, a computer scientist sees technology as intrinsically good, then it follows that society will benefit so long as the technology is built correctly. The realm of ethics is thus reduced to, say, writing technically competent programs, while questions of which programs to write or how these will affect society fall by the wayside. This narrow view of ethics has been well-documented by scholars in Science & Technology Studies, and I draw upon this literature in an attempt to find ways to overcome this barrier.

Ethics is not just about doing the job right; it’s also about doing the right job. In order to have a discussion on this level, however, we must first overcome the barriers of technological determinism and the artificial separation between professional and social responsibility. The goal of my paper, therefore, is two-fold: (1) to illustrate how certain views of technology obstruct meaningful ethical discussions; and (2) to suggest how these obstructions might be overcome by providing alternative views of technology. Rather than accept technology as fixed and inevitable, I propose we view it as malleable and contingent. Looking at technology in this way opens up the possibility that ethics can and should play an important role in the shaping and design of information systems.