Legal Issues Legal issues include copyright / intellectual property infringements, libel / defamation, disability discrimination and data protection. Any statement of copyright (eg to results / logos on results.pfd files etc) should be made to the user (the GP) in the small print / terms and conditions of website use. Also included in the terms and conditions should be information for the user on the intellectual property of the content, how their data is used / stored / disposed of, whether cookies / web statistics are used, and how much information they log, any virus protection offered to the user (eg has the.pdf sent back to them been scanned?) and (if necessary) the linking policy of the site (if any outside links are used, need a disclaimer to state that content is outside webmaster’s control).

Legal Issues cont. Important parts of the Data Protection Act to consider are: –Information that you have on or collect through the site must only be used for the purpose for which it was obtained. –You should specify the purpose on the site and, where possible, give users the opportunity to ‘opt out’ of the data collection. –You should not collect or store more personal data than you need for the specified purpose. –All personal information should be accurate, up-to-date and available to the individual on request. The Disability Discrimination Act requires that “reasonable adjustments” are made to make the site accessible for the widest range of people, for example the learning disabled, the physically impaired, or those with less computing experience. This isn’t hugely important when regarding only GPs, as they can quite safely be assumed to have at least basic computing skills.

Social Issues These issues, as far as I can work out, are to do with the sectors of society being addressed, and making sure that all are included equally. This crosses over a little with ethical issues.

Ethical Issues Ethical issues involves what documentation is non-sensitive enough to be kept on the server (if any), and making sure that all the legal issues are considered in the acquiring and handling of the data. All ethical issues in reality have to go through the National Research Ethics Service, whose guidelines can be found here: yLink.aspx?alId=4798

Information Collection for Specification This could be to do with presenting to the client, in which case the information will be collected by all members of the group, and collated into one specification. It could also be to do with how information will be collected within the system itself, in which case it will be through user input (in specified file types, according to the inner workings of the statistical analysis modules), then the output of the modules, with (so far as we decided at client meetings) as little residual data collected on the server as possible.

Network Diagram 1

Design Contraints The controller needs to know what modules are available, and be able to (extensibly) report this to the user for them to choose from. The entire system needs to be outsourced to an external server/cluster. Starting small, it needs to be monitored in case business grows, requiring another server / more servers to be added. Presentation to the user, in whatever format, needs to be sure not to get stuck in spam filters.

Design Idea 1 The design as drawn at the client meeting. All held on external server.

Design Idea 2 Statistical analysis modules held externally to the server. Saves space, much less processing to be done on server saving money, but more security issues in sending sensitive data to an outside processor.

Design Idea 3 With user login system, and the addition of an updater. Updater checks the available modules from a module bank where all are held (on the server/cluster), on a call from the controller, returning a list of the available modules, with descriptions, for the user to pick from.

Design Idea 4 As design 3, but with creation of presentation outsourced.

Gantt Chart