Program: Professional Year Program
Course:
Assignment: 1 Professional Environments
Topic: Ethics, Professionalism and Governance
Available: Week 3 open
Due: Week 4 close (Saturday midnight AEST)
Read the 3 Case Studies below and select ONE as the basis of your analysis and discussion. Please indicate clearly which Case Study you have chosen
Case Study 1 – Jennifer the Consultant
Three years ago Jennifer started her own consulting business. She has been so successful that she now has several people working for her and many clients. Their consulting work include.sd advising on how to set up corporate intranets, designing database management systems, and advising about security.
She is currently designing a database management system for the personnel office of a mediumsized company. Jennifer has involved the client in the design process, informing the CEO, the director of computing, and the director of personnel about the progress of the system. It is now time to make decisions about the kind and degree of security to build into the system. Jennifer has described several options to the client. Because the system is going to cost more than previously planned, the client has decides to opt for a less secure system. Jennifer believes that the information they will be storing is extremely sensitive. It will include performance evaluations, medical records for filing insurance claims, salaries and so forth.
With weak security, employees working on client machines may be able to figure out ways to gain access to this data, not to mention the possibility of online access from hackers. Jennifer feels strongly that the system should be more secure. She has tried to explain the risks, but the CEO, director of computing and director of personnel all agree that less security will do.
What should she do? Should she refuse to build the system as they request?
Case Study 4 – Quality Assurance Case
A small software company is working on an integrated inventory control system for a very large national shoe manufacturer. The system will gather sales information daily from shoe stores nationwide. This information will be used by the accounting, shipping, and ordering departments to control all of the functions of this large corporation. The inventory functions are critical to the smooth operation of the system.
Jane, a quality assurance engineer with the software company, suspects that the inventory functions of the system are not sufficiently tested, although they have passed all their contracted tests. She is pressured by her employers to sign off on the software. Legally she is only required to perform those tests which have been agreed to in the original contract. However, her considerable experience in software testing has led her to be concerned over risks of the system.
Her employers say that they will go out of business if they do not deliver the software on time. Jane contends if the Inventory sub-system fails, it will significantly harm their client and its employees. If the potential failure were to threaten lives, it would be clear to Jane that she should refuse to sign off. But since the degree of threatened harm is less, Jane is faced with a difficult ethical decision.
Case Study 7 – Website Links
Yan is a public servant, he is a web developer within a department of a state government. Yan has been given responsibility for developing a tourism website by the I.T. Manager Sarah. Yan adds various links to news services to enliven this government webpage. These links include global news channels.
It is later found that those sites sometimes provide news on court cases which are currently under suppression order here in Australia as they are in process. When noticed this causes huge embarrassment to the government department.
Sarah, the I.T manager of the department had not seen the website before it went live but even if she had it is unlikely that she would have noticed and tested every link. In any case the links were not problematic until a local court case gave rise to a publication suppression order.
Sarah now needs to determine who should take responsibility and what actions should be taken about the event. She needs to prevent recurrence of this type of problem.
Briefly discuss the dilemma for Sarah. Show your utilisation of either Thomas White or Chris MacDonald's methodology to demonstrate how Sarah might analyse and resolve the dilemma. Provide a recommendation of what actions Sarah should initiate and to whom she needs to communicate throughout the process.
Include in your answer those clauses from the ACS Code of Ethics and ACS Code of Professional Conduct that are relevant and briefly explain why. Refer also to any relevant legislation again with an explanation of how it relates.
Assignment Task
From what you have learned during Week s 3 and 4 of your Professional Environments Course, discuss ethical, professional and legal issues which you consider arise from this scenario. Make some recommendations of actions which could be taken to resolve the situation and/or to minimise the chance the scenario may recur. Support your answers with relevant references (as well as the Codes and Laws).
Things to Consider in Your Assignment:
• You should list at least 3 clauses from the ACS Code of Ethics and up to 5 clauses from the ACS Code of Professional Conduct, you think are specifically relevant in deciding how to resolve the situation. Make sure that you refer to the most up to date ACS Codes which are available on the ACS website – www.acs.org.au.
• You should also list any relevant Australian legislation that you think applies to this scenario.
• Your analysis, discussion and recommendations should use the framework you selected in Week 3 – Solving an Ethical Dilemma.
Your assignment should be 400 -500 words in length (excluding your code lists, legislation list and references).
You may need to undertake a small amount of research, however, most information you will need is available via the seminars and their references. Also,
• use a cover page – as per the suggested template,
• use in-text referencing,
• use complete Harvard Notation, submit in “Word” format or equivalent format that can be readily opened in MS Word, keep your formatting simple: Arial 11pt, 10pt after paragraph, single line spacing, headings in bold, maximum 2 indent levels/bullet levels. Do not use page borders, word art, page backgrounds or similar extraneous decoration
• Your uploaded file name should identify you as part of its name – e.g.
PE_Assignment1_William_Smith.
Marking Guide
Marks will be awarded using the following guidelines.
• 15% meeting the procedural requirements, including, spelling, grammar, number of words, document formatting,
• 30% how logically and thoroughly you identified and described professional ,ethical and legal issues arising in the scenario,
• 30% how well you developed your recommendations and supported them with relevant, correct referencing,
• 20% how well you convinced the reader that you understood the issues,
• 5% did the material generate interest in the reader?