ITC506 Information Technology Ethics and Quality Assurance

1. Identify a recent (within the last six (6) months) ethical dilemma or ethically questionable situation relating to ICT that you are familiar with. This situation can be either in the media (for example one you have sourced from a newspaper, or online through social media) or through your workplace.

a. If using a workplace example, to maintain confidentiality, do not use real names.
b. If you use a media article you must include the link to the media article in the references list of your assignment.

2. Undertake further research about your chosen case to assist you in analysing and discussing it in your essay.

3. You are required to analyse the ethical dilemma you have identified above using the Doing Ethics Technique (DET). The word limit should be between 900-1000 words. Note: Headings, citations, references and any appendices do not count towards your word limit, but quotations do. At the start of the assignment indicates in brackets the word count of your assignment excluding those items mentioned above.

4. Include a Reference list at the end of your work, in the correct APA referencing style, corresponding to in-text citations. You must include at least TWO (2) quality academic references from different sources. Please note that these references are in addition to those provided to you through this subject (for example, you still must reference, the DET, Tavani, the Interact subject lecture notes etc BUT these references cannot be used as one of your two quality academic references from different sources). Only include references that have been cited in the body of your assignment and ones that support what you have presented in your assignment.

Rationale
The assessment item is designed to help you to build skills towards achieving the learning objectives, by requiring you to:
identify an ICT-related ethical issue in your workplace or in a contemporary media article;
using the Doing Ethics Technique (DET), analyse the situation and the arguments it presents, to:
identify the ethical issues involved;
assess the implications of those issues; and
develop solutions to the issues
apply proper academic referencing.

Answer:

Doing Ethics Technique (DET) – Case Study

What’s going on?

The case study that has been selected for carrying out an ethical analysis as per the Doing Ethics Technique (DET) is based on the activities of the QA group in an organization. The Quality Assurance (QA) group associated with a project in an organization came up with an internal decision to provide a QA sign off on the project without actual execution of the testing procedures. The justifications that were put forward for the decision included the trust on the development group of the project and the customers.

What are the facts?

The prime responsibilities of a QA group are the provide assurance on the qu

ality of a product or a system by verifying and validating it against the requirements and specifications. The depth and type of assurance activities that are done by the development group or the customers is completely different from the one that is carried out by the QA group. It is because of this reason that the system will have certain defects that will go undetected till the end and will come up as issues during the usage by the customer (Bergold & Thomas, 2012).

What are the issues?

Development group that is associated with the project carries out unit testing on the system. Customers are also included in the testing and quality assurance procedures to carry out usability and acceptance testing. However, it is the responsibility of the QA group to execute various other testing types such functional, integration, regression, smoke, sanity, performance and security testing (Heeney, 2016). The QA group views the system from various aspects and makes use of technical and non-technical approaches to highlight the errors and bugs present in the system. The activity results in the improvement of quality of the product. Providing the sign off without carrying out all of these activities will leave various defects as undetected in the system (Glover, 2009).

Who is affected?

The decision of the QA group will affect the customers as they will receive a product with bugs and defects. There may also be stability issues and performance issues that may come up.
The decision of the QA group will affect the development team as the responsibility of the errors will be laid on the resources of this team (Birkholm, 2016).
The decision of the QA group will affect the group itself as presence of the defects in a system or a product showcases the inefficiencies of the QA team.
The decision of the QA group will affect the organization as it will receive negative response from the customers.

What are the ethical issues and the associated implications?

Character Ethics

It is required to have ethical morals as the basis for an activity in order to place it in the category of ethical correct act as per the principles of this theory. The morals and character of the QA group are not ethically correct as they showcase dishonesty and incompetence (Annas, 2014).
According to the guidelines of this ethical theory, the decision that has been taken by the QA group to provide sign offs is evaluated to be ethically incorrect.

Theory of Consequentialism

It is necessary to have positive and beneficial outcomes from an act in order to place it in the category of ethically correct act as per the principles of this theory. The outcome from the decision taken by the QA group will leave defects and bugs in the system.
It will also create problems for the customers and end users as they may face difficulties in terms of functional aspects and non-functional system qualities.
The outcomes will also be damaging for the organization as it will receive negative feedback on its product and will also receive customer complaints (Hoeyer, 2012).
According to the guidelines of this ethical theory, the decision that has been taken by the QA group to provide sign offs is evaluated to be ethically incorrect.

Deontology Ethics

It is necessary to abide by the associated rules and responsibilities for an activity to place it in the category of ethically correct act as per the principles of this theory. The rules say that the QA group must execute the testing and quality assurance activities before providing a final go ahead and sign off on a system.
According to the guidelines of this ethical theory, the decision that has been taken by the QA group to provide sign offs is evaluated to be ethically incorrect (Mandal, Ponnambath, & Parija, 2016).

What can be done about it?

The QA group must execute and fulfill all of its responsibilities instead of relying on the other teams and groups for its duties. The sign off that is provided by the group shall only be accepted if there are other testing deliverables such as test completion report and defect report already submitted by the group (Ehrbar, 2015).

What are the available options that may be used?

Review and inspection sessions shall be made a common practice to be followed by the senior management and project leaders. It will make sure that the employees of all the teams perform their duties without any gaps.
The management shall also make it mandatory for every resource to submit a daily status report covering the activities that are performed in a day. Also, the team heads must submit a weekly status report on the progress made by the team.
Before providing the sign off on the system, the QA group must be asked to submit other deliverables associated with QA and testing such as test plan, test completion report and defect status report.
Testing activities must be carried out on all the project phases rather than restricting it to the testing and implementation phases only. Also, the customers shall be involved during all of such processes.

References

Annas, J. (2014). Applying Virtue to Ethics. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/japp.12103/abstract

Bergold, J. & Thomas, S. (2012). Participatory Research Methods: A Methodological Approach in Motion. Qualitative-research.net. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1801/3334

Birkholm, K. (2016). HYLE 22-1 (2016): The Ethical Judgment: Chemical Psychotropics. Hyle.org. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://www.hyle.org/journal/issues/22-1/birkholm.htm

Ehrbar, J. (2015). Ethical Considerations of Genetic Manipulation in Sport. The Sport Journal. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://thesportjournal.org/article/ethical-considerations-of-genetic-manipulation-in-sport/

Glover, J. (2009). Doing Ethics in Rural Health Care Institutions. Retrieved from https://geiselmed.dartmouth.edu/cfm/resources/ethics/chapter-04.pdf

Heeney, C. (2016). An Ethical Moment in Data Sharing - May 13, 2016. Journals.sagepub.com. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0162243916648220

Hoeyer, K. (2012). Transgressive ethics: Professional work ethics as a perspective on ‘aggressive organ harvesting’ - Oct 26, 2012. Journals.sagepub.com. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312712460341

Mandal, J., Ponnambath, D., & Parija, S. (2016). Utilitarian and deontological ethics in medicine. Retrieved 23 March 2017, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4778182/

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