Chapter 11 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems PDF

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Chapter 11 – Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems (Week 12) What ethical, social and political issues are raised by information systems What specific principles for conduct can be used to guide ethical decisions? Why do contemporary information systems technology and the internet pose challenges to the protection of individual privacy and intellectual property? How have information systems affected everyday life? 11.1 Understanding Ethical and Social Issues Related to Systems 

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Define Ethics? Ethics refers to the principles of right and wrong that individuals, acting as free moral agents, use to make choices to guide their behaviours o Also refers to the principles and standards that guide our behaviour towards other people Information systems raises ethical issues for both individuals and societies because they create opportunities for intense social change o This social change threatens existing distributions of power, money, rights and obligations o Information technology can be used to achieve social progress, but it can also be used to commit crimes and threaten cherished social values Ethical issues rise along with the rise of the internet and electronic commerce o Internet and digital technologies make it easier to assemble, integrate, and distribute information o Raises concern about use of customer information, the protection of personal privacy, and the protection of intellectual property

A Model for Thinking About Ethical, Social and Political Issues 

Ethical, social and political issues are closely linked o Because an ethical dilemma typically is reflected in social and political debate

Five Moral Dimensions of the Information Age 

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Information Rights and Obligations o What information rights do individuals and organizations possess with respect to themselves? o What can they protect? Property Rights and Obligations o How will traditional intellectual property rights be protected in a digital society in which tracing and accounting for ownership are difficult and ignoring such property rights is so easy? Accountability and Control o Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual and collective information and property rights?

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System Quality o What standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society? Quality of Life o What value should be preserved in an information- and knowledge-based society? o Which institutions should we protect from violation? o Which cultural values and practices are supported by the new information technology?

Key Technology Trends that Raise Ethical Issues 

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Doubling of computer power every 18 months o Made it possible for most organizaztions to use information nsystems for their core production processes o Lead to a dependency on systems and a vulnerability to system errors/ poor data quality have increased Advance in data storage techniques and rapidly declining storage costs? o Made the routine violation of individual privacy both cheap and effective Advances in data analysis techniques for large pools of data o Companies and government agencies are able to find out highly detailed personal information about individuals more easily o Define Profiling? Profiling is the use of computers to combine data from multiple sources and create electronic dossiers of detailed information on individuals Mobile device growth impact o Individual cell phones may be tracked without user consent or knowledge

11.2 Ethics in an Information Society Basic Concepts: Responsibility, Accountability and Liability   

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Ethical choices are decisions made by individuals who are responsible for the consequences of their actions Define Responsibility? Responsibility means that you accept the potential costs, duties and obligations for the decisions you make Define Accountability? Accountability is a feature of systems and social institutions o Means mechanisms are in place to determine who took responsible action and who is responsible Define Liability? Liability extends the concept of responsibility further to the area of laws o

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Liability is a feature of political systems in which a body of laws is in place that permits individuals to recover the damages done to them by other actors, systems or organizations Define Due Process? Due process is a related feature of law-governed societies and is a process in which laws are known and understood, and there is an ability to appeal to higher authorities to ensure that the laws are applied correctly

Ethical Analysis 

When confronted with a situation that seems to present ethical issues, how should you analyse it? o Identify and describe the facts clearly o Define the conflict or dilemma and identify the higher-order values involved

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Identify the stakeholders Identify the options that you can reasonably take Identify the potential consequences of your options

Candidate Ethical Principles  

Once your analysis is complete, what ethical principles or rules should you use to make a decision? Define Golden Rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you o Putting yourself into the place of others, and thinking of yourself as the object of the decision  Define Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative? If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone o If everyone did this, could the organization, or society, survive?  Define Descartes’ rule of Change? If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it is not right to take at all o An action may bring about a small change now that is acceptable, but if repeated, it would bring unacceptable changes in the long run  Define Utilitarian Principle? Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value o Assumes you can prioritize values in a rank order and understand the consequences of various courses of action  Define Risk Aversion Principle? Take the action that produce the least harm or the least potential cost o Some actions have extremely high failure costs of very low probability  Define Ethical “No Free Lunch” rule? Assume that virtually all tangible and intangible objects are owned by someone else unless there is a specific declaration otherwise

11.3 Moral Dimensions of Information Systems Information Rights: Privacy and Freedom in the Internet Age 

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Define Privacy? Privacy is the claim of individuals to be left alone, free from surveillance or interference from other individuals or organizations, including the state o Information technology and systems threaten individual claims to privacy by making the invasion of privacy cheap, profitable and effective  The internet age poses new challenges for the protection of individual privacy o Information sent over a vast network of networks passes through many different computer systems before it reaches its final destination o Each of these systems is capable of monitoring, capturing and storing communications that pass through it  Define Cookies? Cookies are small text files deposited on a computer hard drive when a user visits Web sites o Cookies identify the visitor’s web browser software and track visits to the web site o When users return to a site with a stored cookie, the web site will search for it and know what the person has done in the past, also updating the cookie o Using a cookie, the site can customize its content for each visitor’s interests Technical Solutions o Encryption, do not track option, detecting eliminating spyware, preventing computers from accepting cookies Ethical Issue

Companies analyse large pools of data from multiple sources to rapidly identify buying patterns of customers and suggest individual responses Property Rights: Intellectual Property o

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Define Intellectual Property? Intellectual property is considered to be intangible property created by individuals or corporations o Information technology has made it difficult to protect intellectual property because computerized information can be so easily copied or distributed on networks o Intellectual property is subject to a variety of protections under three different legal traditions: trade secrets, copyright, and patent law Define Trade Secrets? Trade secrets are any intellectual work product – a formula, device, pattern or compilation of data – used for a business purpose o Trade secret laws grant a monopoly on the ideas behind a work product o Trade secret law protects the actual ideas in a work product, not only their manifestation  To make this claim, the creator or owner must take care to bind employees and customers with nondisclosure agreements and to prevent the secret from falling into the public domain Define Copyright? Copyright is a statutory grant that protects creators of intellectual property from having their work copied by others for any purpose during the life of the author plus an additional 70 years after the author’s death Define Patent? Patent grants the owner an exclusive monopoly on the ideas behind an invention for 20 years Digital media increases the ease of replication, ease of transmission, ease of alteration, and therefore making theft easy

Accountability, Liability and Control System Quality: Data Quality and System Errors 

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What is an acceptable, technologically feasible level of system quality? o When should system manager says “Stop testing, we’ve done all we can to perfect this software” Three principal sources of poor system performance are: o Software bugs and errors o Hardware or facility failures caused by natural or other causes o Poor input data quality

Quality of Life: Equity, Access and Boundaries  

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Negative social costs are beginning to mount along with the power of technology Balancing Power: Center vs Periphery o Lowever-level employees may be empowered to make minor decisions, but the ykey policy decisions may be centralized as in the past Rapidity of change: reduced response time to competition o IS have helped to create much more efficient national and international markets o However, if the business does not adjust in time, in response to global competitors it may be wiped out Maintaining Boundaries: family, work and leisure

Danger to ubiquitous computing, telecommuting, nomad computing, mobile computing and the “do anything anywhere” computing environment is slowly endangering “family time” Dependence and Vulnerability o Businesses, governments, schools are become more dependent on information systems and if these systems fail, we become incredibly vulnerable Computer Crime and Abuse o Computer crime is the commission of illegal acts through the use of a computer or against a computer system o Computer abuse is the commission of acts involving a computer that may not be illegal but that are considered unethical Health Risks o Repetitive Stress injury occurs when muscle groups are forced through repetitive actions often with high-impact loads or tens of thousands of repetitions under lowimpact loads such as working at a computer keyboard o

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