Call for Papers: Software Engineering Ethics in a Digital World

Special Issue of IEEE Computer Magazine

Guest Editors: Awais Rashid, John Weckert, Richard Lucas

As the Internet becomes pervasive in our day-to-day lives through wide availability of broadband as well as its ubiquity due to the proliferation of mobile devices, digital communities are becoming a norm. Such digital communities can take a variety of forms. Examples include:

• Online social networks, such as Facebook and Myspace;
• Chat applications, such as MSN and Skype;
• File sharing systems, such as Gnutella and BitTorrent;
• Online gaming and shopping, such as BWin, Amazon Marketplace and eBay;
• Digital worlds such as Second Life.

The rise in digital communities also raises a number of ethical issues relating to privacy, monitoring, data protection, etc. But how should designers of software systems that underpin digital communities or provide specific services therein, such as advertising and policing, reconcile such ethical issues with the need to develop services that make the community both accessible and attractive to a potential user? Three broad issues emerge which can act as examples of wider ethical challenges:

1. Right to privacy vs. the need to protect vulnerable user groups.
2. Freedom of choice vs. protection from harm.
3. Ethical standpoints, which are subject to gendered, generational, religious and cultural variation.

One can observe such challenges in the design of a range of system, such as those for online policing (e.g., to protect children from predatory advances of paedophiles or for tackling terrorist activities), online gambling, presence of extreme right wing political groups in online communities. They also apply to digital communities that span the physical-cyberspace divide such as those using ID cards and biometric passports. Though these issues have been debated in the social sciences community as well as mass media, ultimately software engineers have to reconcile these issues in the core design of software systems, often in the presence of fuzzy ethical boundaries. Given that digital communities are on the rise and with the vision of an information society providing a range of e-Services (such as eHealth, eGovernment, etc.) these challenges will become increasingly critical in both the design of software systems and the digital communities they serve.

Special Issue Topics

The June 2009 issue of IEEE Computer will be dedicated to software engineering ethics in a digital world. We solicit papers on all topics ranging from field studies of software systems operating in ethically challenging contexts to methodologies, processes and codes of conduct. We also encourage articles that take a multi-disciplinary perspective on the challenges informing software engineering practices in this context from social sciences, psychology and criminology perspectives.

We encourage submissions on any topic related to software engineering ethics in a digital world. Key topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Ethical Challenges for Engineering Next Generation Software Systems
• Practice and Policy Implications of Ethics
• Software Engineering in Societal Contexts
• Ethical Aspects of Digital Communities
• Involvement of and accountability to stakeholders’ ethical standpoints during software design
• Ethics regulation in software engineering
• Codes of ethics and conduct

Submission guidelines

Authors should submit articles complying to IEEE Computer submission guidelines available at: http://www.computer.org/computer/author.htm. Submissions should be clearly marked that they are intended for the special issue on Software Engineering Ethics in a Digital World. All submissions will be peer-reviewed according to IEEE Computer guidelines. For queries related to the special issue please contact the guest editors at se-ethics-ieee@comp.lancs.ac.uk.

Important Dates

Submission of articles: 1 January 2009

Special Issue Publication: June 2009