Tutorial 8: Ethical and Societal Issues in Computing and Information Systems
COMP200 · Unit 4 · Section 8
Objectives
Analyze impacts on people, organizations, and environments.
Recognize professional duties and competing values.
Make technology decisions with accountability and inclusion.
Computing changes access, work, privacy, power, safety, and the environment. Ethical analysis identifies
stakeholders, benefits, harms, affected rights, unequal burdens, uncertainty, and alternatives. Professional
responsibility includes competence, honesty, confidentiality, accessibility, security, and willingness to
challenge unsafe decisions.
stakeholders -> benefits and harms -> values in conflict -> alternatives -> accountable decision
Exercises
Analyze automated screening for bias and accountability.
Identify stakeholders in a surveillance proposal.
Suggest inclusive and sustainable alternatives.
Self-check
Who bears a system's risks?
What is accountability?
Why consider alternatives?
Self-Check Quiz
1. Is legal compliance the whole of ethical analysis?
AnswerNo. Ethical analysis also considers fairness, harm, power, accessibility,
sustainability, and professional responsibility.
2. Why identify affected stakeholders?
AnswerPeople who bear impacts may differ from the people who purchase or operate the system.
Homework
Write an ethical impact assessment for a proposed information system.
Identify competing values and affected groups.
Recommend safeguards and an accountability process.
Sample answerA strong assessment names benefits and harms, includes less powerful or excluded
stakeholders, examines privacy, bias, accessibility, labor, and environmental effects, compares alternatives,
assigns decision ownership, and defines monitoring and appeal.