Week 2 Project

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Accountability and Control

To understand the accountability and control of IS, let us consider the following case. Tens of thousands of Bank of America customers in Nevada, California, and Arizona were unable to use their paychecks and social security payments that had been deposited electronically during the weekend of March 15, 2002. Their personal checks bounced. Any cash withdrawals were blocked due to insuf�cient funds. A large batch of direct deposit transactions were not processed due to an operating error at the bank’s computer center in Nevada. It took days to rectify the problem and the bank lost track of the money that should have been credited to customers’ accounts. Cases like this reveal the dif�culties faced by IT executives who are responsible for any harm caused by systems that they developed.

Because computer software is part of a machine and the machine injures someone physically or economically, the producer of the software and the operator can be held liable for damages. However it is dif�cult to hold software producers liable for their software products when the products are treated like books, regardless of the physical or economic harm they may cause.

We have covered the �ve moral dimensions of ethical and social issues of IS and how they affect organizations and society. The issues are related to society in terms of IS planning, development, and utilization of IS and technologies. As a result, increasing computing power, storage, and networking capabilities have expanded the reach of corporate actions to create new ethical issues for information societies.