Ethics and Policy Group
This group will focus on research related to ethical and policy issues within the Information Sciences, particularly those related to applications of technology to major challenges facing society. These challenges include such topics as:
- meeting the information needs of an aging population;
- developing secure information systems while protecting the privacy of personally identifiable information;
- incorporating diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds and values into the development, management and use of information systems;
- developing and evaluating pedagogical methods for incorporating an understanding of policy and ethical issues into IT and other IS and LIS courses;
- studying the interaction between government, technology, and industry as related to the telecommunications and information industries;
- identifying and using case studies, such as the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or the recent NARA reclassification controversy, for teaching and for research topics
- understanding the cost structures of information infrastructures
- understanding the role, or lack thereof, of professional codes of ethics in guiding information professionals
- ensuring methods of preserving older records and documents (from paper to print to digital) in the midst of rapidly changing electronic information systems for purposes of accountability and evidence
Expertise from interdisciplinary teams of faculty and students will develop a research agenda, defining key research questions and using both qualitative and quantitative methods to design applied research projects in collaboration with experts from other disciplines, such as sociology, economics, political science, computer science, engineering, psychology, social work, philosophy, and education.
Faculty
- Ellen Detlefsen
- Martin Weiss
- Mary Kay Biagini
- Richard Cox