"A computer company is writing the first stage of a more efficient accounting system that will be used by the government. This system will save tax payers a considerable amount of money every year. A computer professional, who is asked to design the accounting system, assigns different parts of the system to her staff. One person is responsible for developing the reports; another is responsible for the internal processing; and a third for the user interface. The manager is shown the system and agrees that it can do everything in the requirements.

The system is installed, but the staff finds the interface so difficult to use that their complaints are heard by upper level management. Because of these complaints, upper-level management will not invest any more money in the development of the new accounting system and they go back to their original, more expensive system."

• A new expensive more effective system for

government is developed to save money of

tax-payers.

• Users find this system too complicated.

The old system is used again, the new one

is thrown away.

• Government

• Development Management

• Users of the new system

• Tax payers

• Giving tax-payers a hope to save money

• Wasting money

• A lot of tax-payers’ money were used for

nothing

• Users of the system were not asked about their opinion what to improve in the system although their the only actual users using the system

• Not well defined requirements were provided, so the final product couldn’t be used

• More than ICT Ethics issue, I see an ethical

issue about tax-payers and handling their

money. This issue doesn’t necessarily have

to be connected with ICT.

• Government wanted to have more effective

system to save money

• Development team developed the parts of

the system by different programmers so the

system can be completed faster

• Users of the system find the new system too

complicated and don’t feel like learning how

to work with it.

• Government doesn’t want to spend any

more money although maybe only GUI

needs to be modified

• “To a utilitarian, the choice that yields

the greatest benefit to the most people

is the choice that is ethically correct”

• Government wanted to save the money of

tax-payers, so actually the government's

money, and perhaps also to save time of

users working with this system

• “What matters with regard to whether

an action is right or wrong is why the

action was done. What matters is

doing our duty.”

• The government was trying to do its best:• Create a more efficient system to save money and

use them for some other important purposes

• In the end, when we saw that the new system

couldn’t be used, the government didn’t want to

spend any more money on that project, because its

duty is not to waste money