The growing diffusion of software in society and its influence on people demands from its creators that their work carefully considers human values such as transparency, social responsibility, and equality. But how do software practitioners address human values in software engineering practice? We interviewed 31 software practitioners from two organizations, each having a strong values framework, with the aim to understand: (a) practitioners' perceptions of human values and their role in software engineering; (b) practices that practitioners use to address human values in software; and (c) challenges they face during this process. We report our findings from two contrasting case organizations on how practitioners "engineer" values in their unique organizational settings. We found evidence that organizational culture significantly contributes to how values are addressed in software. We summarize recommendations from the practitioners to support proactive engineering of values-conscious software.
Given the ubiquity of mobile apps in daily lives, understanding and reflecting end-users’ human values (e.g., transparency, privacy) in apps has become increasingly important. Violations of end users’ values by software applications have resulted in a wide range of difficulties for end users. Value violations may bring more and lasting problems for marginalized groups of end-users. This research aims to understand the extent to which Bangladeshi female farmers' values, marginalized and vulnerable end-users, who are less studied by the software engineering community, are reflected in agriculture apps in Bangladesh. Further to this, we aim to identify possible strategies to embed their values in those apps. To this end, we conducted a mixed-methods empirical study consisting of 13 interviews with app practitioners and focus groups with 20 Bangladeshi female farmers. The accumulated results from the interviews and focus groups identified 22 values of Bangladeshi female farmers, which the participants expect to be reflected in the agriculture apps. Among these 22 values, 15 values (e.g., accuracy) are already reflected and 7 values (e.g., accessibility) are ignored/violated in the existing agriculture apps. We also identified 14 strategies (e.g., “applying human-centered approaches to elicit values”) to address Bangladeshi female farmers’ values in agriculture apps.
The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), represented by ChatGPT, has raised concerns about responsible AI development and utilization. Existing frameworks lack a comprehensive synthesis of AI risk assessment questions. To address this, we introduce QB4AIRA, a novel question bank developed by refining questions from five globally recognized AI risk frameworks, categorized according to Australia's AI ethics principles. QB4AIRA comprises 293 prioritized questions covering a wide range of AI risk areas, facilitating effective risk assessment. It serves as a valuable resource for stakeholders in assessing and managing AI risks, while paving the way for new risk frameworks and guidelines. By promoting responsible AI practices, QB4AIRA contributes to responsible AI deployment, mitigating potential risks and harms.
The Journal is the primary organ of Continuing Paediatric Medical Education in Sri Lanka. The journal also has a website. Free full text access is available for all readers.The Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health is now indexed in SciVerse Scopus (Source Record ID 19900193609), Index Medicus for South-East Asia Region (IMSEAR), CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International Global Health Database), DOAJ and is available in Google, as well as Google Scholar.The policies of the journal are modelled on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines on Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Sri Lanka Journal of Child Health is recognised by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) as a publication following the ICMJE Recommendations.
The ubiquity of mobile applications (apps) in daily life raises the imperative that the apps should reflect users' values. However, users' values are not usually taken into account in app development. Thus there is significant potential for user dissatisfaction and negative socio-economic consequences. To be cognizant of values in apps, the first step is to find out what those values are, and that was the objective of this study conducted in Bangladesh. Our focus was on rural women, specifically female farmers. The basis for our study was Schwartz's universal human values theory, and we used an associated survey instrument, the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). Our survey of 193 Bangladeshi female farmers showed that Conformity and Security were regarded as the most important values, while Power, Hedonism, and Stimulation were the least important. This finding would be helpful for developers to take into account when developing agriculture apps for this market. In addition, the methodology we used provides a model to follow to elicit the values of apps' users in other communities.
Agile methods are predominantly focused on delivering business values. But can Agile methods be adapted to effectively address and deliver human values such as social justice, privacy, and sustainability in the software they produce Human values are what an individual or a society considers important in life. Ignoring these human values in software can pose difficulties or risks for all stakeholders (e.g., user dissatisfaction, reputation damage, financial loss). To answer this question, we selected the Scaled AgileFramework (SAFe), one of the most commonly used Agile methods in the industry, and conducted a qualitative case study to identify possible intervention points within SAFe that are the most natural to address and integrate human values in software. We present five high-level empirically-justified sets of interventions in SAFe: artefacts, roles, ceremonies, practices, and culture. We elaborate how some currentAgile artefacts (e.g., user story), roles (e.g., product owner), ceremonies (e.g., stand-up meeting), and practices (e.g., business-facing testing) in SAFe can be modified to support the inclusion of human values in software. Further, our study suggests new and exclusive values-based artefacts (e.g., legislative requirement), ceremonies (e.g., values conversation), roles (e.g., values champion), and cultural practices (e.g., induction and hiring) to be introduced in SAFe for this purpose. Guided by our findings, we argue that existingAgile methods can account for human values in software delivery with some evolutionary adaptations.
Limited consideration of users' values in mobile applications (apps) can lead to user disappointments and negative socio-economic consequences. Therefore, it is important to consider values in app development to avoid such adverse effects and to secure the optimum use of apps. With this aim, we conducted a case study to identify the users' desired values that are either reflected or missing in the existing Bangladeshi agriculture mobile apps. We manually analyzed 1522 reviews from 29 existing Bangladeshi agriculture apps in Google Play by following a widely used human values theory, Schwartz's theory of basic human values. Our results show that users of the selected apps have twenty one (21) desired individual values where eleven (11) values are reflected in the apps and ten (10) values are missing. This research provides a basis for the developers to design apps that consider users' values. It also provides a direction on which values they should address while developing apps. Moreover, repeating this research in different domains or societies would result in society-oriented apps that are more sensitive to users' values.
Blockchain technology has been used to build next-generation applications taking advantage of its decentralised nature. Nevertheless, there are some serious concerns about the trustworthiness of blockchain due to the vulnerabilities in on-chain algorithmic mechanisms, and tedious disputes and debates in off-chain communities. Accordingly, blockchain governance has received great attention for improving the trustworthiness of all decisions that direct a blockchain platform. However, there is a lack of systematic knowledge to guide practitioners to perform blockchain governance. We have performed a systematic literature review to understand the state-of-the-art of blockchain governance. We identify the lifecycle stages of a blockchain platform, and present 14 architectural patterns for blockchain governance in this study. This pattern language can provide guidance for the effective use of patterns for blockchain governance in practice, and support the architecture design of governance-driven blockchain systems.