Page - 141 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

Responsible Software Engineering 141 the promotion of privacy, safety and security, and quality through appropriate softwareengineering,sustainabilityshouldbeanchoredinsoftwareengineering, for example (1) the ecological sensitivity for energy and resource efficiency of software and (2) the value-sensitivity in data collections, algorithms and heuristics. 2. Techno-Social Responsibility by the software community: Not only corporate social responsibility [26]shouldbeaddressedby thedigital community,butalso a techno-social responsibility in the meaning of (1) understanding how digital business models could as well as should not affect society and (2) shaping the digital business models, solutions and infrastructures according to the agreed societal principles. 3. Responsible Technology Development by the society: Responsible software engineering should be strategically promoted and supported by appropriate research funding, also known as Responsible Research and Innovation [26] in themeaningofresearchandinnovation(1)basedonsocietalgoals,whichshould also (2) explicitly anchor and demand the UN sustainable development goals [27]. 4. State-of-the-Art Software Engineering within every software project: It is in the responsibility of the people in power and in action to make use of those software engineeringmethodsand tools that fit the purposeand that fit the level ofsoftwarecriticality.This isnotonlyamatterof tort liabilitybutalsoofsocietal responsibilities in light of safety-, security-, environment-, or business-critical software-basedsystems. 5. Last but not least, such responsible software engineering (see Fig. 2) could be promoted by a Weizenbaumian Oath [28] to reflect the professional ethics for sustainable design, development, operation and maintenance, and use of software and of software-based systems. Joseph Weizenbaum (1923–2008)was a computer science pioneer,whocritically examinedcomputer technologiesand the interactions of humans and machines. He called for a responsible use of technology. Through the Weizenbaumian Oath, all the tech communities could commit to general principles that guide the development and application use of softwareandofsoftware-basedsystems.Theseprinciplesshouldalsobecomean integral part of the education and training of experts and may constitute a new module in educationschemes in softwareengineering includingISTQB[29]. 4 EthicalPrinciples in ResponsibleSoftware Engineering In responsible software engineering, in addition to software quality matters, the focus is on the comprehensibility, explainability and fairness of software-based systems,andontheultimatepeople’sdecisionsovereigntyincriticalsocio-technical contexts.ProfessionalorganizationssuchastheAssociationforComputingMachin- ery (ACM) or the German Association for Informatics (GI) already give guidance