Digital dilemmas: Values, ethics and information technology

In writings on public administration, the subject areas of values and ethics and of information technology (IT) have received substantial, but largely separate, attention. The public administration community can benefit by drawing on scholarship in the field of information and computer ethics and developing its own body of research with a view to sensitizing public servants to the effects of changes in IT on values and ethics. This article focuses on developments in the use of IT (for example, self-service technologies, Big Data, the Internet of Things) as a basis for assessing their implications for public sector values and ethics. Research is needed on the extent to which the values and ethics regimes of public organizations take account of the impact of changes in IT; the degree to which the various components of these regimes can foster sensitivity to the implications of these changes; and the significance for the public sector of such emerging ethical issues as robot ethics. Value conflicts and dilemmas arising from advances in digital technologies argue for vigorous measures to alert public servants to the technologies' impact.