Chapter 17

Ethical, Societal, and Global Issues in Information Systems

17.1 The Domain of Ethics

Information technology is a powerful tool that can be used to further organizational goals, pursue national interest, or support environmentally sustainable development. The same technology has also made it easier to engage in ethical or unethical business practices electronically anywhere in the world. The way the technology is deployed in organizations depends on our decisions as managers, computing professionals, and users of information systems. All of us therefore, should make these decisions guided not only by the organizational and technological aspects of information systems, but also in consideration of their effects on individuals.

Ethics and Codes of Ethics [Figure 17.1]

Instructors can begin this chapter by asking students the questions posed in this section of the chapter?

1. How do ethical issues relate to legal ones?

2. Is an ethical breach punishable by law?

3. If there is no law that penalizes a certain conduct, does it mean that you are always right behaving in that way?

Ethics is a study of the principles of right and wrong that ought to guide human conduct. Human behaviour and decision making fall into three domains of:

1. Legal issues

2. Ethical issues

3. Discretionary domain

As we develop and use information systems to solve organizational problems or to respond to opportunities, we need to make sure that our solutions is proper with respect to each of these domains.

Legal Domain - governs a variety of relatively well-described behaviours, specified by law and enforceable in the courts of a given country or within a local jurisdiction.

Ethical Issues - is governed by the general norms of behaviour and by specific codes of ethics. Ethical considerations go beyond legal liability.

Sunshine principle: To see whether your decision making in a given case involves an ethical issue, apply the Asunshine principle@: What if I read about my decisions and subsequent actions in tomorrow's paper?

Discretionary Domain - only if the action is both legal and ethical falls into this domain, where we act properly entirely according to our preferences. In this domain, we can apply such criteria as organizational desirability or cost-benefit analysis.

Knowledge of ethics as it applies to the issues arising from the development and use of information systems helps us make decisions in our professional life. Professional knowledge is generally assumed to confer a special responsibility within its domain. This is why the professions have evolved codes of ethics, that is, sets of principles intended to guide the conduct of the members of the profession.

The principal codes of ethics for information systems professionals are the:

1. ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

2. The Code of Ethics and Standards of Conduct adopted by DPMA.

These codes of ethics provide guidelines for ethical conduct in the development and use of information technology. End users and IS professionals would live up to their ethical responsibilities by voluntarily following such guidelines. For example, you can be a responsible end user by:

1. Acting with integrity

2. increasing your professional competence

3. Setting high standards of personal performance

4. Accepting responsibility for your work

5. Advancing the health, privacy, and general welfare of the public

Ethical Theories

Ethical theories give us the foundation from which we can determine what course of action to take when an ethical issue is involved. At the source of ethics lies the idea of reciprocity. There are two fundamental approaches to ethical reasoning:

1. Consequentialist theories

- tells us to choose the action with the best possible consequences. Thus, the utilitarian theory that represents this approach holds that our chosen action should produce the greatest overall good for the greatest number of people affected by our decision. This approach is often difficult to apply, since it is not easy to decide what the Agood@ is and how to measure and compare the resulting Agoods@.

2. Obligational (deontological) theories

- argues that it is our duty to do what is right. Your actions should be such that they could serve as a model of behaviour for others - and, in particular, you should act as you would want others to act toward you. Our fundamental duty is to treat others with respect, and thus not to treat them solely as a means to our own purposes.

Treating others with respect, means not violating their rights. The principal individual rights are:

1. The right to life and safety

2. The right of free consent

3. The right to privacy

4. The right to private property

5. The right of free speech

6. The right of fair treatment

7. The right to due process

17.2 Scenarios in the Ethical Domain

This section describes three small minicases. Give the students a few minutes to read these issues. Spend a few minutes in open discussion with the students on how they would react to the given situation.

17.3 Ethical Issue in the Development and Use of Information Systems [Figure 17.3]

The welfare of individuals and their specific rights, need to be safeguarded in the environment of an information society. The principal ethical issues of concern with regard to information systems have been identified as the issues of:

1. Privacy

2. Accuracy

3. Property

4. Access

Tracing an ethical issue to its source and the understanding of which individual rights could be violated helps understand the issue.

17.4 Privacy

Privacy is the right of individuals to retain certain information about themselves without disclosure and to have any information collected about them with their consent protected against unauthorized access.

Invasion of privacy is a potent threat in an information society. Individuals can be deprived of opportunities to form desired professional and personal relationships, or can even be politically neutralized through surveillance and gathering of data from the myriad databases that provide information about them.

The Privacy Act serves as a guideline for a number of ethics codes adopted by various organizations. The Act specifies the limitations on the data records that can be kept about individuals. The following are the principal privacy safeguards specified:

1. No secret records should be maintained about individuals

2. No use can be made of the records for other than the original purposes without the individuals consent.

3. The individual has the right of inspection and correction of records pertaining to him or her.

4. The collecting agency is responsible for the integrity of the record-keeping system

The power of information technology to store and retrieve information can have a negative effect on the right to privacy of every individual. Computers and related technologies enable the creation of massive databases containing minute details of our lives which can be assembled at a reasonable cost and can be made accessible anywhere and at any time over telecommunications network throughout the world.

Two database phenomena create specific dangers.

Database matching - makes it possible to merge separate facts collected about an individual in several databases. If minute facts about a person are put together in this fashion in a context unrelated to the purpose of the data collection and without the individual's consent or ability to rectify inaccuracies, serious damage to the rights of the individual may result.

Statistical databases - are databases that contain large numbers of personal records, but are intended to supply only statistical information. A snooper, however, may deduce personal information by constructing and asking a series of statistical queries that would gradually narrow the field down to a specific individual.

Legislation and enforcement in the area of privacy in the United States are behind those in a number of other countries. The countries of the European Union offer particularly extensive legal safeguards of privacy. In the environment of business globalization, this creates difficulties in the area of transborder data flow, or transfer of data across national boundaries. Countries with more stringent measures for privacy protection object to a transfer of personal data into the states where this protection in more lax. The United Nations has stated the minimum privacy guarantees recommended for incorporation into national legislation.

Privacy protection relies on the technical security measures and other controls that limit access to databases and other information stored in computer memories or transmitted over the telecommunication networks.

17.5 Accuracy

Pervasive use of information in our societal affairs means that we have become more vulnerable to misinformation. Accurate information is error-free, complete, and relevant to the decisions that are to be based on it.

Professional integrity is one of the guarantors of information accuracy. An ethical approach to information accuracy calls for the following:

1. A professional should not misrepresent his or her qualifications to perform a task.

2. A professional should indicate to his or her employer the consequences to be expected if his or her judgment is overruled

3. System safeguards, such as control audits are necessary to maintain information accuracy. Regular audits of data quality should be performed and acted upon.

4. Individuals should be given an opportunity to correct inaccurate information held about them in databases.

5. Contents of databases containing data about individuals should be reviewed at frequent intervals, with obsolete data discarded.

17.6 Property

The right to property is largely secured in the legal domain. However, intangibility of information is at the source of dilemmas which take clarity away from the laws, moving many problems into the ethical domain. At issue primarily are the rights to intellectual property: the intangible property that results from an individual's or a corporation's creative activity.

Intellectual property is protected in the United States by three mechanisms:

1. Copyright

- A method of protecting intellectual property that protects the form of expression (for example, a given program) rather than the idea itself (for example, an algorithm).

2. Patent

- Method of protecting intellectual property that protects a non-obvious discovery falling within the subject matter of the Patent Act.

3. Trade secret

- Intellectual property protected by a license or a non-disclosure agreement

Computer programs are valuable property and thus are the subject of theft from computer systems. Unauthorized copying of software (software piracy) is a major form of software theft because software is intellectual property which is protected by copyright law and user licensing agreements.

17.7 Access

It is the hallmark of an information society that most of its workforce is employed in the handling of information and most of the goods and services available for consumption are information-related. Three necessities for access to the benefits of an information society include:

1. The intellective skills to deal with information

2. Access to information technology

3. Access to information

One should strive to broaden the access of individuals to the benefits of information society. This implies broadening access to skills needed to deal with information by further enabling literacy, access to information technology, and the appropriate access to information itself.

Intensive work is being done on developing assistive technologies - specialized technologies than enhance access of the handicapped to the information technology and, in many cases, to the world at large.

17.8 Making Ethical Decisions

This section continues with the three small minicases from section 17.2. Give the students a few minutes to read these issues. Spend a few minutes in open discussion with the students on how they can follow the decision-making sequences outlined in the text.

1. Examine the issues to see whether they fall in the ethical domain. Seek appropriate professional guidance if the issues seem to be in the legal domain. Apply the Asunshine test@ to see whether the issue is ethical or discretionary: would your decision withstand a public disclosure?

2. If you believe that ethical issues are involved, would a course of action you are considering violate individual rights? Would the action violate a professional code of ethics?

3. Choose the course of action that would not result in an ethical breach.

17.9 Impacts of Information Technology on the Workplace

Due to the pervasive use of information technology and its dual potential to be used for good or bad, we need to consider the specific issues that arise when people work with information systems.

Positive and Negative Potential of Information Technology

The ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct commits computer professionals to Adesign and build information systems that enhance the quality of working life.@

It has been established that people experience job satisfaction when:

1. They have a sense that their work is meaningful

2. They feel a sense of responsibility for the results of their work and have a sense of autonomy and control

3. They receive feedback about their accomplishments

Sociotechnical design of information systems is performed in recognition of these crucial factors of employee motivation. Information systems with very similar functionalities can have positive or negative consequences in the workplace. The same information technology can have different impacts, depending on the way it is used in an organization.

Some of the negative effects of information technology include:

1. Use of computers has displaced workers in middle management (whose primary purpose was to gather and transfer information) and in clerical jobs.

2. Some categories of work have virtually disappeared which has created unemployment for a number of workers

3. May create a permanent underclass who will not be able to compete in the job market

4. Computer crime is a growing threat (money theft, service theft, software theft, data alteration or theft, computer viruses, malicious access, crime on the internet).

5. Health issues

6. Societal issues (privacy, accuracy, property, and access)

Some of the positive effects of information technology include:

1. The ability to work from remote locations.

2. Access to individuals with disabilities

3. Medical diagnosis

4. Computer-assisted instruction (learning aids)

5. Environmental quality control

6. Law enforcement

Computer-Based Work Monitoring [Figure 17.5]

Computer-based work monitoring and, related to it, telephone call accounting and service monitoring is practised to ensure the quality of customer service and to provide objective evaluation of employee performance. The aggregate information gained from these information systems is necessary for management as a means of planning and control. However, when used improperly, these systems can not only raise ethical concerns but actually be counterproductive.

Invasive use may result in increased employee stress and a sense of lack of autonomy. When the gather information is inappropriately applied to individual employees, such usage raises questions about privacy and quality of working life.

It should be a primary goal of managers and computing professionals to lower the invasiveness of monitoring.

Emerging Technologies: Opportunities and Threats in the Workplace

The emerging new technologies keeping offering opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of people's work - and present new threats to their rights.

Health issues - the use of technology in the workplace raises a variety of health issues. Heavy use of computers is reportedly causing health problems such as:

1. Job stress

2. Damaged arm and neck muscles

3. Eye strain

4. Radiation exposure

5. Death by computer-caused accidents

Ergonomics - solutions to some health problems are based on the science of ergonomics, sometimes called human factors engineering. The goal of ergonomics is to design health work environments that are safe, comfortable, and pleasant for people to work in, thus increasing employee morale and productivity.

Ergonomics stresses the healthy design of the workplace, workstations, computers and other machines, and even software packages. Other health issues may require ergonomic solutions emphasizing job design, rather than workplace design.

Whistle blowing - According to the full text of the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, a computing professional has an obligation Ato report any signs of systems dangers that might result in serious personal or social damages.@ If one's superiors do not act on the warning, the professional may find it his or her ethical obligation to report the violations outside of the organization. However, an extremely careful assessment of all the relevant aspects of risk and responsibility must precede such an act. Otherwise, the reporting itself may be harmful.

Ethical behaviour of employees is highly dependent on the corporate values and norms - on the corporate culture as a whole. Open debate of ethical issues in the workplace and continuing self-analysis help keep ethical issues in focus. Many corporations have codes of ethics and enforce them as part of a general posture of social responsibility.