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We need your input to develop a Data Ethics Framework
- Avinash Chuntharpursat, SAEON Information Management Coordinator and Vice-Chair of the ILTER Information Management Committee
With continuous advancements in Information Technology, public access to information and data has been made much easier than the past. These advancements have often resulted in swift societal change to make optimum use of the new technologies. This cascade of advance and response needs to be based on a solid ethical foundation to ensure sustainability and societal stability.
The above scenario is of particular relevance to information and data management in Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER). Global climate change as a contemporary issue has exposed LTER to the public eye, with the resultant demand for data potentially overwhelming scientists and information/data management systems alike. A societal data ethic should govern the way in which scientific data is produced, archived, extracted, analysed and used.
Currently, attempts are being made with various in-house data policies and national legislature to govern the dissemination and use of data. These have their limitations. Legislature is often difficult and expensive to implement and at times unable to follow the rate of technological advancement. In-house data policies are usually only relevant to the organisation by which they are produced, and potentially exclusive from those of other organisations, thus preventing data exchange. A societal effort needs to be made to transcend these policies to allow the public greater access to data whilst protecting the integrity of the data and associated researchers.
At the South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON), an ethical framework is currently being developed, as illustrated in Figure 1.
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In Figure 1 the Information and Data Management System (I/DMS) is shown to consist of components and requirements. (More on components and requirements can be gleaned from a literature search.) To integrate the components and requirements there are numerous ethical issues that come into play. These issues can be viewed as interactions between - and within - components and requirements of the I/DMS.
As an example, the ethical interaction between "People" and "Data Quality" could be qualities including integrity, honesty and accuracy. Numerous such interactions can be derived from the framework. If anyone is interested in seeing how many they can get, please email the results to avinash@saeon.ac.za before 20 February 2007. (If sufficient numbers are received, the results will be published in a forthcoming article, giving full credit those who submitted them.)
This article was written with the aim of catalysing the process of developing a Data Ethic that is applicable to everyone. The point illustrated in Figure 1 is that data ethics can be integrated into a local I/DMS, and hence the integration of data ethics into the broader scientific community shouldn't present too great a problem.
* Part 2 will be published in the March issue of SAEON eNews
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