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July2004 |
GIS and Ethics: Reloaded
Academics should avoid endorsing
particular software and data products.
This is difficult because in both cases near monopolies tend to exist. Governments at the national and local levels are frequently the sole suppliers of reliable data. Finally, academics have an obligation to debate and discuss these issues
Governments
An excellent online discussion of the ethical implications of the use of GIS technology in government is where Akhlaque Haque discusses three areas of GIS ethical misconduct especially relevant to government agencies(14). The first area is technical incompetence in the production of GIS maps and analysis.
Second, there is the possibility of misrepresentation of reality either by deliberate errors of commission or omission. Finally, there is a concern over data gathering. Data that are acquired by governments should be guaranteed to be as accurate as possible and should be accompanied by metadata describing its characteristics, origins, and strengths and limitations, and should be freely and easily accessible.
Few national and local government jurisdictions allow free access. The main example is the United States where government collected data is deemed to belong to the taxpayer and the taxpayer therefore has the right of access to this data for the cost of the media necessary to disseminate it. Other jurisdictions such as Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom adopt a cost recovery approach that leads to GIS data being prohibitively expensive for most citizens. Taylor (1998, p.204) is extremely critical of the cost recovery approach stating that it would be "highly detrimental" if applied in the developing world. Anthony Yeh (1998) has discussed the availability and pricing of georeferenced data throughout the Asia-Pacific region. A related concern in developing countries is the cost of Internet access.
In Canada the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has studied this issue and maps indicating the varying degrees of Internet access in Africa are available at their website (15). One solution to this lack of access may be the establishment of telecentres and again the IDRC has discussed these possibilities (16).
Helping to change access to data and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the developing world is the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (17). While Geographic Information System is not overly prominent at WSIS (the acronym is even used to stand for the Global Information Society!), the 1,000 Cities GIS Programme of UN-Habitat is an exception promoting the use of Geographic Information System in improving the lives of urban dwellers around the globe (18).
This is a joint initiative between UN-Habitat and ESRI, the firm donating the software. The two organizations signed a memorandum of understanding in early 2003. The aim is to make available to cities in developing countries Geographic Information System software that can be used to manage the operations of a city (19). This is a good example of yet another third-world enterprise that might have been celebrated in an ethics statement at their website - if they had one.
Academics
Academics often belong to professional associations that reflect their disciplinary backgrounds. Many American GIS specialists are geographers and many of these will belong to organizations such as the American Association of Geographers(20). Such organizations often have their own ethical codes of conduct. The AAG, for example, has had
such a code in place since 1998 and this may be found easily by typing "ethics" into their search engine(21). This does not work at all for the website belonging to the Canadian Association of Geographers(22). On the Asia Geographic Information System Association website (23) I could not find a site search engine and no mention of ethics either. Perhaps this is coming in the future?
Academics should avoid endorsing particular software and data products. This is difficult because in both cases near monopolies tend to exist. Governments at the national and local levels are frequently the sole suppliers of reliable data. Finally, academics have an obligation to debate and discuss these issues. Fortunately the debate was enjoined early and has been continuing ever since. Thus in 1995, the journal Cartography and Geographic Information Systems published a special issue on GIS and Society in which several articles dealt specifically with the ethics of GIS.
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