Responsibility and the Work of IT-Professionals

Abstract

Unlike most computer-ethics discussions on issues like hacking, software piracy, or "big" ethical issues, we want to discuss the routine work of ITspecialists and the context in which it is situated. The work of creating and facilitating use of IT-systems offers many routine opportunities to "do the right thing" and many contextual factors hindering this. Thus our analysis starts looking at everyday practice, and reconstructing "responsibility". With this approach we hope to expose new ethical issues. Using the rich structure and history of the term "responsibility" as a resource, we learn to use essential notions like intention, voluntariness, autonomy, obligation, possibility of foresight, causal influence, (care) responsibility, and attribution and discuss how these relate to the practice of IT practitioners. This discussion aims to give some structure to the messy entanglement of practice, pointing to general problems and issues like: workplace and computing culture, the ability for ethical judgement, showing how global and local actions, collective and individual choices supplement each other.

A Comparative Study on the Ethical Responsibilities of Key Role Players in Software Development

“…These codes also outline the moral responsibilities of the profession [7]. In analysing some of the popular codes of ethics' stances on the responsibilities of software engineers, Herkert et al [28] defines the engineer's paramount responsibility as "to protect the "safety, health, and welfare" of the public" whilst Bittner and Hornecker [12] highlight the protection of "public interest". In the software engineering area, for simplicity's sake, the IEEE-CS/ACM code of ethics [29] lists the ethical obligations in a catalogue of eight principles (i.e., public, client, product, judgement, management, profession, colleagues and self), with major emphasis on advocacy for the "public interest".…”

“…Software engineers being conscious about their responsibilities can increase attention towards curbing the vulnerabilities emanating from possible software failures [11]. Secondly, because the software engineering profession advocates for the public good in all its software development initiatives [12], it invokes the need to upscale the assumption of responsibility. Thirdly, because software professionals have an enormous impact on the lives and well-being of others [13], the wielding of power in terms of decision-making and technical expertise inherent in software development requires caution [14].…”

A micro-ethical view on computing practice

“…We found Bayertz' [4] reconstruction of the historical formation and development of the concept responsibility useful as an alternative approach, lending systematic and principled structure to our discussion of everyday professional responsibility. The following presentation of Bayertz' reconstruction is selective to aspects relevant here and short-cuts arguments primarily relevant for ethical theory (for a more extensive account see [4,7]). …”

“…This is sometimes motivated by fear of competitors, but often is simply not regarded important, is intended to keep developers "happy, not to waste their time" [3], or users are high-paid and indispensable at work and hence inaccessible. Division of labor and high workloads limit the action space even if an individual is able to discern negative effects [7,16]. The requirement to remain loyal to employers in combination with the responsibility for on-time completion of projects (documented in contractual secrecy and loyalty statements) often competes with what's best for the client.…”