PART 1: DOING ETHICS TECHNIQUE AND ETHICAL THEORY QUESTIONS Part 1 - Question 1 – Doing Ethics Technique This session we have restricted the cases to the following three (3). One of these will appear on the exam. We encourage you to prepare all three. A retired nurse applied for a pension from Centrelink, and was informed that she would receive a small pension of $8 per fortnight, and a Pension Card. She then received a letter saying that her pension would not be paid because she had assets of over $18 million, and an annual income of over $770,000. It took this lady several attempts to get Centrelink to examine her case. Finally, the cause of the mistake was found to be a “human error” when the lady’s investment details were coded into the computer. When the cause of the mistake was discovered, she was informed that they “couldn’t remove it from the computer”. Centrelink claimed that this was an "isolated incident". However, at the same time, another man was discussing with Centrelink their claim that he had an income of $6 million, which was not the case. Jean, a statistical database programmer, is trying to write a large statistical program needed by her company. Programmers in this company are encouraged to write about their work and to publish their algorithms in professional journals. After months of tedious programming, Jean has found herself stuck on several parts of the program. Her manager, not recognising the complexity of the problem, wants the job completed within the next few days. Not knowing how to solve the problems, Jean remembers that a co-worker had given her source listings from his current work and from an early version of a commercial software package developed at another company. On studying these programs, she sees two areas of code which could be directly incorporated into her own program. She uses segments of code from both her co-worker and the commercial software, but does not tell anyone or mention it in the documentation. She completes the project and turns it in a day ahead of time. Andrew, a highly qualified and experienced software developer, has just started work with a government health department on a project that has been underway for about 9 months. He is replacing a novice developer who has decided to move on to a new project with another organisation. Even though the current system is incomplete, it has is being used with 'live' data. On analysing what's been done so far, Andrew discovers that the system is poorly designed and is riddled with bugs due to the former developer's lack of expertise, and that the choice of technologies are incompatible with the department's infrastructure, leading to corruptions and loss of financial data on a daily basis. In fact, much of Andrew's time is initially spent unsuccessfully attempting to recover corrupted data. His vast experience leads him to the conclusion that the system is so unstable that it will eventually corrupt beyond repair and that all its data will become unrecoverable. He therefore advises the supervisor of his findings and recommends that the system be redeveloped using appropriate technologies and quality control measures. He indicates that the entire redevelopment effort will take less than 6 weeks. The supervisor rejects Andrew's recommendation, stating that their IT Department will not agree to a change in technology, and directs Andrew to complete the project using the existing technologies. What should Andrew do? Reference: Australian Computer Society (2012). ACS Code of Ethics Case Studies & Related Clauses to the Code of Conduct Website: https://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/30964/ACS_Ethics_Case_Studies_v2.1.pdf