ethics

ICT710

ICT Professional Practice & Ethics

Task 2

2019 ATMC Semester 1

ICT710 Professional Practice & Ethics – Task 2

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Assessment and Submission Details

Marks: 35% of the Total Assessment for the Course

Due Date: 5:00pm Friday, 24 May 2019

Assignments should be submitted via SafeAssign.

Please follow the submission instructions on Blackboard. All assignments will be checked for plagiarism and/or collusion between individuals. Refer to the assignment rubric on Blackboard for the marking criteria and standards. The assignment will be marked out of a total of 100 marks. Refer to your course outline or the course Blackboard web site for a copy of the “Student Misconduct, Plagiarism and Collusion” guidelines. Note: Each student MUST retain a copy of the assignment and this copy MUST be produced within 24 hours of it being requested by the Course Coordinator. Failure to produce the second copy of the assignment when requested may result in loss of marks or a fail grade for the assignment.

Requests for an extension to an assignment MUST be made to the Course Coordinator prior to the date of submission and requests made on the day of submission or after the submission date will only be considered in exceptional circumstances.

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Case: Cambridge Analytica Background: Recently it was uncovered that a company, Cambridge Analytica, had provided information to President Trump’s presidential campaign that would allow targeted Facebook political posts to influence peoples voting intentions. They gathered personal information through a quiz which required a Facebook login to complete, and 270,000 people took the quiz. As part of the Facebook log in these people gave permission for Cambridge Analytica to gather their personal data and their friends’ personal data. This meant that they had access to 8,700,000 or almost a quarter of Facebook users in USA. Watch the ‘Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXdYSQ6nu-M Read some details about the Cambridge Analytica scandal here: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/facebook-cambridge-analytica-scandal-everything-you-need- to-know.html There is limited information available to you now, hence you are required to further explore the case. Assignment Requirements and Deliverables You are required to write a report (2500 words) that should include the following details in the main body of the report. Please note standard report structure including an executive summary, introduction and conclusions in addition to the main body must be adhered to.

• Background to the case study

• Analysis of the situation using the “Doing Ethics Technique” (following)

• Analysis of the situation from the point of view of an ICT Professional using the ACS Code of

Ethics.

• Conclusions to bring together the two analyses and presents overall recommendations

Doing Ethics Technique – Hints and Tips The ‘Doing Ethics’ technique is a process for analysing ethical issues in any scenario. It doesn’t guarantee that what you come up with will be the best solution, but it does help you to think ethically. The technique may seem a little vague and perhaps lacking guidance, however the following might help you to understand how to apply the technique to better understand ethical analysis.

Q1. What’s going on? This is a synopsis of what the case is all about. It can be taken from a variety of perspectives, for example, from the perspective of a person raising a complaint, in which case, it is a synopsis of the complaint. It can be taken from the perspective of an involved observer, in which case, it is an outline of what was observed, without going into too much detail. Where you see multiple perspectives, you should describe them here.

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Q2. What are the facts? This is a descriptive list of the facts of the case. This doesn’t just describe the case; it lists the facts as they are known (from all sources and perspectives), and also what one might reasonably consider to be possibilities. For example, if a person was raising a complaint, Question 1 would outline their complaint, and Question 2 would provide the evidence to both support and refute that argument. All such facts must be demonstrable or supportable. It would be worthwhile to assign a credibility weighting to each fact, to help with later analysis. Q3. What are the issues? This is a list of ALL the issues that are involved in the case. In Question 5 we can extract only the ethical issues for further analysis, but for now, simply extract and describe every relevant issue you can think of. Q4. Who is affected? This is a list of all the stakeholders involved in the case. This need not be restricted to the ones specifically mentioned in the case; you should consider who/what else might be affected by the issues listed at Question 3, regardless of the degree to which they are affected. In this question, you should describe how each stakeholder is affected, both positively and negatively, and perhaps comment on the degree of effect. Q5. What are the ethical issues and implications? For this question, you need to extract only the ethical issues identified at Question 3. List the ethical issues, discuss them in terms of classical ethical theory (as best you can), and discuss their implications – on the stakeholders and on the community in general. Q6. What can be done about it? This question elicits a general idea of what can be done to resolve the case, whether those ideas are practical, possible, or not. Generally what kind of resolutions might there be? You need not go into great detail to answer this question, as its purpose is to provide a basis for answering Question 7, but you do need to think broadly and laterally to come up with several alternatives.

Q7. What are the options? This question requires that you list and describe (in detail) all the possible options that might be available to resolve the case. Be creative here; the most obvious options are not always the best. It’s possible that not all options will result in a positive outcome for all stakeholders. List and describe at least three different options and discuss the benefits and detriments of each. Q8. Which option is best – and why? In answering this question, you need to assess which of the options described in Question 7 is the best. You are recommending one of several options here, so you need to argue for your recommendation, providing a solid basis in fact and reasonable (and supportable) conjecture. You should add some of your own intellectual property, as an ICT professional, into answering this question. Supporting your argument based on classical ethical theory is not a requirement at this point, but it is what would be expected if you were a professional Ethicist.

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Relevant Resources Australian Computing Society (ACS) Ethics:

• https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-documents/Code-of-Ethics.pdf

• https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/rules-and-regulations/Code-of-Professional-

Conduct_v2.1.pdf

Submission The report is to be prepared as a single Microsoft Word document with electronic submission through SafeAssign by the due date. For details on report structure refer to:

Summers, J. and Smith, B., 2014, Communication Skills Handbook: How to succeed in written and oral communication, 4th, Wiley, Singapore

Appropriate referencing is required (both in-text and a bibliography). The assignment will be assessed according to the assignment rubric available on Blackboard. Late submission of the assignment will be penalised according to USC policy 7.8.2. Assignment Return and Release of Grades Assignment grades will be available on the Blackboard web site with an electronic assignment marking sheet.

Where an assignment is undergoing investigation for alleged plagiarism or collusion the grade for the assignment and the assignment will be withheld until the investigation has concluded.

End of Assignment 2

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