Towards an ethical interaction design: the issue of including stakeholders in law-enforcement software development

In the public sector (particularly in the UK in light of
recent reforms i.e. the Local Government Act 2000, etc.)
a greater degree of accountability and public involvement
or intervention has become the norm in public
infrastructure projects, partially under the rubric of
“stakeholder engagement”. This paper seeks to discuss
public involvement in a law-enforcement technology
(Isis), which operates on a covert basis in the detection
and prevention of child abuse activities across a number
of social networking facilities. Our contribution to the
development of Isis is to perform an ethics centered
consultation process with stakeholders who will
contribute to the design and deployment of the end
software package. To that end, we have sought to
develop a “Modified Participatory Design” approach,
utilizing the knowledge gained from the HCI community
with regards to more traditional design projects and
adapting this body of work to questions of ethics, privacy,
corporate and civic responsibility, monitoring and
awareness issues, etc. in an effort to create a fluid and
agile communication process between stakeholders and
designers, thus taking account of the ethical issues around
Isis as design occurs.

Including the post-refereed version as permitted by publishers (8/11)

Conference details: 21st Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design: Open 24/7; held in Melbourne, Australia — November 23 - 27, 2009.