Incorporating Ethical Aspects in Information Systems Requirements Engineering

Ethical considerations in software requirements engineering are a critical but often overlooked aspect of the software development process. However, requests for transparency and autonomy in the way IT artefacts are designed, described, used, applied and integrated in the everyday life are getting more pressing within the society. In this research, the process of software engineering is taken as an illustrative model for the proactive incorporation of ethical principles in the system design within the design of a software artefact. Specifically, the phase of requirements elicitation and analysis are expanded with ethical aspects, since that is where the first steps of the software construction as an artefact are initiated and the first common ground of understanding is achieved. Being rooted in the security engineering, the SQUARE process is expanded to provide a basic structure for incorporating of ethical aspects into software design. By doing so, the social and moral values become central to the design and development of new technologies.