4B Rohan

Rohan is a public servant. He is a web developer within a department of a state government.

Rohan has been given responsibility for developing a tourism website by the IT Manager

Radha. Rohan adds various links to news services to enliven this government webpage. These

links include global news channels. It is later found that those sites sometimes provide news

on court cases that are currently under suppression order here in Australia as they are in

process. When noticed this causes huge embarrassment to the government department.

Radha, the IT manager of the department had not seen the website before it went live but even

if he had it is unlikely that he would have noticed and tested every link. In any case, the links

were not problematic until a local court case gave rise to a publication suppression order.

Radha now needs to determine who should take responsibility and what actions should be

taken about the event.

What professional ethical dilemmas are Rohan and Radha dealing with here? (e.g.

Should

we allow or sanction Rohan's behaviour? Is there a public interest question raised by this

scenario? What actions do everyone involved need to take to ensure that this kind of situation

does not occur again?

)

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