Last updated: April 28, 2006

Project Legal & Ethical Review

The purpose of the Legal & Ethical Review is to provide an assessment of circumstances surrounding your project to ensure that appropriate objectives and obligations are met.  The Legal & Ethical Review must address the items specified below:

1. Address the legal and social issues that will be important during the development of your project.  Depending on what your project is, you may need to address different topics.   In some cases it may be necessary to observe legal requirements imposed by law, such as cases involving collection and display of information protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).  Some projects may have an association with a social or even moral issue.  If so this needs to be discussed.
    

2. In most cases it will be necessary to evaluate your project to determine if there are any licensing requirements that must be observed.  Licensing may come into play if you use software packages developed and distributed by others, even if they are available in the public domain, or provided as open source.  There may also be copyright issues associated with reuse of non-code intellectual material produced by others.  You will need to address ownership of your finished product and the position you take needs to be acceptable to your project sponsor.  Be sure to address any rights to the finished product you wish to reserve to yourselves.
    

3. Using the Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice as a guide, for each of the eight principles listed, provide a statement that defines your interpretation of the principle and how you will achieve its objective as you work on your project.   The principles are written from the perspective of an individual in professional practice.  In order to apply these principles in an academic setting we need to make some adjustments to this perspective.  A reference to the "public" should consider the collection of eventual product users and anyone else who might be affected by the product.  References to an "employer" or "manager" should be thought of as referring to the University and your course instructor.  The University is the organization in which you are performing and your course instructor is the person giving you overall guidance and supervision.  A reference to "client" should be though of as referring to your course instructor since he is the person who will evaluate your work from a client's or customer's perspective.  Although this is an individual project course, other students in the course and elsewhere constitute "colleagues."  In addressing issues surrounding relationships with colleagues you need to be sure to address bounds on what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate collaboration.
   
   For additional ideas on topics to consider see the IEEE Code of Ethics.