Your lecturer will place several links in Interact to a number of relevant articles and/or case studies. These will be available to you just after your first assignment has been submitted.

1. Choose one of the media articles or case studies listed by the lecturer in Interact.
2. Use the title of the article/case study provided in interact as the title of your essay, so that the lecturer knows which article you are analysing.
3. Undertake further research about your chosen topic, to assist you in analysing and discussing it in your essay.

Case : Max in the State Department

Summary of case

Max works in a large state department of alcoholism and drug abuse. The agency administers programs for individuals with alcohol and drug problems, and maintains a huge database of information on the clients who use their services. Some of the data files contain the names and current addresses of clients.

Max has been asked to take a look at the track records of the treatment programs. He is to put together a report that contains the number of clients seen in each program each month for the past five years, length of each client's treatment, number of clients who return after completion of a program, criminal histories of clients, and so on. In order to put together this report, Max has been given access to all files in the agency's mainframe computer. After assembling the data into a file that includes the clients' names, he downloads it to the computer in his office.

Under pressure to get the report finished by the deadline, Max decides he will have to work at home over the weekend in order to finish on time. He burns the information onto a CD and takes it home. After finishing the report he leaves the CD at home and forgets about it. ACS Code of Professional Conduct values and relevant clauses of the Code of Professional

Conduct

1.2.1 Public Interest

d) take into consideration the fact that your profession traverses many other professions, and has implications for other social systems and organisations;

g) endeavour to preserve the confidentiality and privacy of the information of others.

1.2.2 Quality of Life

a) recognise, in your work, the role that ICT can play to enhance the quality of life of people, particularly the disadvantaged or those with disabilities;

1.2.4 Competence

d) respect and protect your stakeholders' proprietary interests;

You are required to complete the following:

Step 1. Construct a diagram using Rationale to map the arguments about a moral claim that you have identified in the article/case study:

• Include all supporting and objecting claims. These claims should include facts collated from your own research, classical ethical theories that support or object to the claim and ACS codes that are in conflict with the claim
• You are expected to 'finish off' the case's arguments, turning it into a valid and properly structured argument.
• You should use information from the article/case study, other sources discovered during your research, and your own reasoned arguments. A balanced and impartial argument is the objective.
• All arguments must obey the Golden Rule, Rabbits Rule, Holding Hands Rule and the Pyramid Rule.
• The main claim/conclusion must be an ethical claim.  

Step 2. Write an essay, which maps closely to the Rationale diagram that you constructed in Step 1.

• The word limit for the essay is 1,300 words ± 10%. Headings, citations and references do not count towards the word limit, but quotations do.
• All the claims shown on the Rationale diagram must appear in the essay, and all claims made in the essay must appear on the Rationale diagram. The essay must present all the detailed information that the Rationale diagram cannot.
• Remember to analyse the article/case study from the perspective of at least two different classical ethical theories and present well reasoned arguments for your assessments and recommendations.  

Step 3. Write an overall conclusion that justifies your recommendations made in your essay.
Step 4. Reference list

• Include a Reference list at the end of your work, in the correct APA referencing style, corresponding to in-text citations.
• You must include at least five (5) quality references from different sources. Please note that these five references are in addition to those provided to you through this subject (for example, you still must reference, Tavani, the ACS code, the Interact subject lecture notes etc BUT these references cannot be used as one of your five quality references from different sources).
• Only use references that have been cited in the body of your assignment and ones that support what you have presented in your assignment.