Marks:
Submission Components: Submission Due:
Report Submission To:
Length:
Anticipated Commitment: Objectives/Graduate Attributes:
20 marks (20%)
Softcopy Report
6pm Sunday, 8 September 2019
UTSonline (softcopy)
Approximately 2,500words (of report body) 12 hours per student
4 / A1, B6, E1, F2
This is an individual assignment
31272 PMP Assignment 1
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, SYDNEY
31272 Project Management and the Professional Assignment 1 – Spring 2019
Technology development is occurring swiftly. In particular, advances in automation and communication have allowed a range of drone devices to be easily deployed from remote locations without their operators ever being visible or put at risk. This has potential application for everything from innocent entertainment for weekend hobbyists or the easy commercial couriering of packages to recipients…right through to more serious applications such as stealth surveillance of individuals by government agencies and the cost-effective delivery of lethal payloads against selected targets.
While commercial value might be obvious, sometimes the ethics behind exploiting certain technological advances is unclear. In fact, one could say that technology (and its potential for use/misuse) has been growing faster than either the law or ethics have been able to match.
Background
In this assignment you will discuss the ethics of a real-life technology and the variety of situations to which it might be applied. In the current case, consideration should be given to recent development of drone technology and the ability for operators to remote-control unmanned aircraft and similar devices without themselves ever being identified or put at risk. As a project management student who in future may help develop related equipment and software (or have privileged access to information provided by their use) such issues could be quite relevant to your long-term roles and activities within the work sector.
A few descriptive news articles are provided as a base sample in Appendix A along with a few additional links in Appendix B. However, in order to adequately respond to assignment requirements you are expected to do additional research and better inform yourself in regards this topic.
Tasks and Assessment
Prepare a report in three parts answering the questions in each section. You are expected to conceptualise the problem/issue, find relevant references for context, facts, theory and examples and come up with appropriate points of view. Your positions should be supported with argument and citations as appropriate. Marks will also be awarded for presentation and professionalism of the response.
1) Stakeholder Ethics (12 marks)
a) Identify and outline at least 3 ethical issues that may be associated with use of drones. Why do you believe that these are (or could be) ethical concerns?
b) Foreachethicalconcernnominatedin1(a),identifyatleasttwokeystakeholders.Foreachstakeholder attempt to briefly describe the situation and reasoning from their perspective as best you can.
c) For each stakeholder (or stakeholder group) identified in 1(b), select what you believe is the relevant ethical view they have likely taken (i.e. choose from the list of 7 ‘ethical principles’ given on slide 10 of lecture 3). Briefly explain why you attributed that ethical stance to them.
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d) For each ethical concern you nominated in 1(a) discuss your own personal view regarding each issue and choose the likely closest fit from within the 7 ‘ethical principles’ to that viewpoint. Briefly explain your reasoning for selecting your ethical stance.
e) Compare your views expressed in 1(d) to positions previously nominated for stakeholders in 1(c). Discuss any prominent differences/similarities between your own views and those that might be held by these others. Why do you think these differences/similarities exist? Who is most likely to be ‘right’?
2) International Codes of Conduct / Codes of Ethics (6 marks)
Research the Codes of Conduct and Codes of Ethics for Information Technology industry bodies representing Australia (i.e. Australian Computer Society (ACS)) plus two other national or international groups (e.g. Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), Project Management Institute (PMI), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), British Computer Society (BCS), Computer Society of India (CSI), Institute of IT Professionals New Zealand (IITP), etc.).
Answer the following:
a) In your opinion, and supplying reasoning, what evaluation would each Industry Code most likely give regarding the use of automated drones and control systems governing them?
b) Compare the Codes of Conduct/Ethics for the three industry bodies. What are the major differences and similarities between the codes you have examined in regard to the case study subject matter? Why do you believe that these differences, similarities or areas of conflict are present?
Justify answers with specific references to items within case study examples and the Codes themselves.
3) Report Professionalism and Communication (2 marks)
The report should be written as if meant for a professional audience and not just as an attempt to satisfy an academic course requirement. It should communicate clearly, exhibit attention to detail and present itself to a high standard, including:
Good document structure including:
Title page (student name/number, tutor name, tutorial number, title, submission date); Report introduction;
Numbered headings for each section;
Report conclusion;
Reference list page;
Additional appendices (if needed).
Report should have numbered pages and good English expression (including punctuation and
spelling). FEIT cover sheet should be included at the front of the submission.
Clarity and insight – suitable word count (not counting title page, reference list, etc.), deals properly
with each topic without verbosity, shows a depth of analysis;
Appropriate use of quotes, statistics and diagrams (where applicable) backed by properly cited sources.
All references should be noted in the reference list at the end of your report and employ correct Harvard/UTS format.
Note for Repeating Students
If you previously attempted 31272 in Spring 2018 or Autumn 2019 then you may re-use your mark from that time in place of undertaking this assignment. If so, you MUST email the Subject Coordinator with your request by 5pm, 19 August 2019. Return confirmation should be kept. Failure to obtain written approval by this time/date means this assignment is to be undertaken as normal.
Report Submission
Submission Requirements
Assignments are required in softcopy submitted to Turnitin via the ‘Assignments’ tab of UTSOnline for
grading and plagiarism checking. Assignments are expected to be assessed and graded by week 10. 2
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Late Penalty
Late submission will attract a two mark penalty per calendar day. Submissions more than five days late will not be accepted and receive zero unless special consideration has been sought from, and granted by, the Subject Co-ordinator prior to the due date.
Referencing Standards
All material derived from other works must be acknowledged and referenced appropriately using the Harvard/UTS Referencing Style. For more information see:
http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/help/referencing/harvard-uts-referencing-guide
Originality of Submitted Work
Students are reminded of the principles laid down in the “Statement of Good Practice and Ethics in Informal Assessment” (in the Faculty Handbook). Unless otherwise stated in a specific handout, all assessment tasks in this subject should be your own original work. Any collaboration with another student (or group) should be limited to those matters described in “Acceptable Behaviour” section of the Handbook. For essay questions, students should pay particular attention to the recognition of “Plagiarism” as described in that section of the Handbook. Any infringement by a student will be considered a breach of discipline and will be dealt with in accordance with Rules and By-Laws of the University. Penalties such as zero marks for assignments or subjects may be imposed.
Improve Your Academic and English Language Skills
HELPS (Higher Education Language and Presentation Support) Service provides assistance with English proficiency and academic language. Students needing to develop their written and/or spoken English can make use of the free services offered by HELPS, including academic language workshops, vacation courses, drop-in consultations, individual appointments and Conversations@UTS (www.ssu.uts.edu.au/helps). HELPS is located in Student Services on level 3 of building 1, City campus (phone 9514-2327).
The Faculty of Engineering and IT intranet (MyFEIT): http://my.feit.uts.edu.au/myfeit)
and Faculty Student Guide:
http://my.feit.uts.edu.au/modules/myfeit/downloads/StudentGuide_Online.pdf
provide information about services and support available to students within the Faculty.
Useful Hints for This Assignment
ACS code of professional conduct and summary of the code of ethics can be found at: https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/rules-and-regulations/Code-of-Professional-Conduct_v2.1.pdf https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-documents/Code-of-Ethics.pdf
The UTS Library on-line Journal Database may help with your research. It is accessible from http://www.lib.uts.edu.au/databases/search_databases.py. You need to activate your UTS e-mail account (http://webmail.uts.edu.au/ ) in order access the resource.
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APPENDIX A
Starting Examples for Assignment 1
Example 1: Switzerland begins postal delivery by drone
By Agence France-Presse
Swiss postal service says tests will run until the end of July although the widespread use of drones is not likely to kick in for another five years
Swiss Post stressed the drones would be thoroughly tested before being put to wide-scale use. Photograph: Jean-Christophe Bott/EPA
Switzerland’s postal service said on Tuesday it had begun testing parcel deliveries by unmanned drones, although widespread use of the flying postmen is not likely to kick in for another five years. Postal service executives showed off the drones for the first time on Tuesday and said initial tests of the machines’ post-delivery abilities would run until the end of July.
The snow-white drones consist of four branches with propellers on the end extending from a hollow ring the size of a toilet seat. A yellow box, bearing the postal service logo, is lodged in the middle.
“The drone has an extremely light construction and is capable of transporting loads of up to one kilo over more than 10 kilometres with a single battery charge,” Swiss Post said in a statement. The drone “flies autonomously, following clearly defined, secure flight paths, which are drawn up by cloud software developed by Matternet (the drone’s US manufacturer)”, Swiss Post added.
Swiss Post, which is cooperating on the project with Swiss WorldCargo – the air freight division of Swiss International Air Lines – stressed the drones would be thoroughly tested before being put to wide-scale use.
“Until the time of their realistic commercial use in around five years, there are various requirements which need to be clarified,” the company said.
This includes exploring the regulatory framework that would apply when sending the unmanned aircraft out across the Alpine country, which is dotted with numerous remote and isolated villages where drone deliveries could be useful. Swiss Post also said extensive tests would be carried out to explore the technical restrictions of the drones, including limited battery life.
For now, Swiss Post said it expected to mainly use the drones in emergency situations, which could “involve bringing supplies to an area that has been cut off from the outside world following a storm.” “Another realistic possibility is the urgent transport of consignments with the highest priority, such as laboratory tests,” it added.
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Switzerland is not the only place where package-delivering drones could soon appear. Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, announced in late 2013 a plan to airlift small parcels to customers by drone in select markets, less than 30 minutes after an order is received.
But the company warned last month that proposed US rules regulating the use of civilian drones could block it from launching the service, and called for them to be overhauled.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/08/swiss-post-begins-testing-postal-delivery-by-unmanned-drone
Example 2: Drone Wars: The Gamers Recruited to Kill (video)
This is an extract from the film Drone by Flimmer Film
In tiny bunkers in the United States, young pilots are operating unmanned drones targeting ‘bad people’ in Pakistan. Recruited at video game fairs by military leaders who know the value of games that glamourise ‘militainment’, drone pilots are left traumatised by the civilian casualties – or ‘collateral damage’ – their strikes cause. Psychologically distanced from the enemy, are drones the future of warfare?
http://www.theguardian.com/news/video/2015/feb/02/drone-wars-gamers-recruited-kill-pakistan-video
Example 3: Police drone locates missing 81-year-old woman in North Carolina
By Elton Hobson
Police use drone to find elderly woman suffering from dementia.
The search for a missing 81-year-old woman had a happy ending Sunday in Asheboro, N.C., after a police drone was able to locate her in a corn field. According to Randolph County Sherriff Robert A. Graves, police responded to a call of a missing elderly person around 11:30 a.m. Sunday after a woman suffering from dementia wandered away from her home.
Police immediately deployed K-9 units to assist in the search, in addition to an aerial drone, due to what Graves described as “difficult terrain” in a corn field. Less than half an hour later, Officer Adam Krolfifer located the woman, identified in local news outlets as Mary Brown, wandering in a corn field.
“[The cornfield] ain’t too far, I went a long way from there. I went to the river and then backtracked,” Brown told WNCB News in North Carolina. In the video, we see the drone locate Brown, wearing a blue coat and standing alone in a corn field. Within moments, officers were able to zero in on her location. She did not suffer any serious injuries in her brief disappearance.
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The department is hailing it as a big win for their drone, which was only acquired by the department less than two months ago.
“The Drone program at the Sheriff’s Office is one of our newest projects and one more project in our effort of going from ‘Good to Great’ in professional community service,” Brown said in a statement on the department Facebook page. “I am thankful to hear the good news of the safe return of the missing person.”
Police drone locates missing 81-year-old woman in North Carolina
Example 4: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on
By Heather Linebaugh
An Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drone. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I’d start with: “How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?” And: “How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?” Or even more pointedly: “How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?”
Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.
I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
The US and British militaries insist that this is an expert program, but it’s curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.
What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind:
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“The feed is so pixelated, what if it’s a shovel, and not a weapon?” I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian’s life all because of a bad image or angle.
It’s also important for the public to grasp that there are human beings operating and analysing intelligence these UAVs. I know because I was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an almost daily routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone. UAV proponents claim that troops who do this kind of work are not affected by observing this combat because they are never directly in danger physically.
But here’s the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.
Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we fight it, and become bitter. Some troops seek help in mental health clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can talk to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it interesting that the suicide statistics in this career field aren’t reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions are heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety.
Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain’s secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.
The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will continue.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/drones-us-military
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APPENDIX B
Some Other Links, References and Information
General
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_combat_aerial_vehicle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_UAV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR.Drone http://www.dronejournalism.org/code-of-ethics/
Articles Anti-drone protest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/09/imran-khan-taliban-march-drones?INTCMP=SRCH
Sea drones – with missiles
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/02/ministry-defence-plans-unmanned-marine- drones?intcmp=239
Drone proliferation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/04/future-drones?intcmp=239
Radioactivity inspection
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/03/drone-probe-sellafield-silos-hexacopter?intcmp=239
US drone strikes listed and detailed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/aug/02/us-drone-strikes-data?intcmp=239
Who are the pilots?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/02/drone-warfare-unmanned-weapons?intcmp=239
Ethics of defensive killing
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/08/obama-drone-morality/496433/
US drone industry: Open for business at home and abroad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/03/drone-race-factory-slaughter?INTCMP=SRCH
Armed security drones
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/want-to-see-the-aerial-drone-police-could-soon-deploy-in-your-town/
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/05/23/groups-concerned-over-arming-of-domestic-drones/
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The image on this page from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/aug/02/us-drone-strikes-data?intcmp=239#zoomed-picture
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