Implications of an Ethic of Privacy for Human-Centered Systems Engineering

Abstract

Privacy remains an intractable ethical issue for the information society. Given its complicity, there is a moral obligation to redress privacy issues in systems engineering practice itself. This paper investigates the role the concept of privacy plays in contemporary systems engineering practice. Ontologically a nominalist human concept, privacy is considered from an appropriate engineering perspective: human-centered design. Two human-centered design standards are selected as exemplars of best practice, and are analysed using an existing multi-dimensional privacy model. The findings indicate that the human-centered standards are currently inadequate in dealing with privacy issues. Some implications for future practice are subsequently highlighted.

Keywords: Privacy, human-centred design, best practice, Q methodology, standards, systems engineering