ICT351 ICT Professional Practice

Introduction

An industry is known by the ethics it keeps. The better behaviour of the employee, the better will be the growth of the organisation. The set of norms, rules that are followed in an organization is called ethics (Mather and Cummings 2015). This minimize the behavioural difference, set up a proper functioning plan for the company by helping in decision making. The set of these rules are collectively known as code of ethics. There are different code of ethics that are followed on the basis of the kind of industry people work in

The IT industry have has ethics code for computer, network as well as behavioural. The ethical issue could be participatory, accessibility, hyborg involvement etc. There could be ethical issue faced by the organization in breaking those norms or there could be situation of ethical dilemma (Myers and Venable 2014). This could hamper the career growth of an employee or the organization in different ways.  This is the case of the ethical issue has been faced under an IT company.

This is the case analysis of the ethical issue that was reported in a small software company. The name of the company is kept anonymous because of the confidentiality. The case focuses on the ethical issue that was faced by one of the software engineers working under this IT firm. In order to understand the case, the case is being analysed by DET and ACS techniques of understanding ethical issues (Koppman, Mattarelli and Gupta 2016). The DET will give the overall view of the case and the ACS will help us to understand the lagging that was caused regarding which professional negligence. The overall analysis gives us idea how to prevent an ethical issue in an organization to prevent damage that could affect the individuals or the organization.

DET Technique of Analysis

The doing ethic technique helps to analyse the situation by setting up questions , the trial and error , this technique is independent of any parameters and are reliable because it covers up all the area through question (Lehnert et al. 2016). Here we apply the DET technique over the small software firm and extracting the facts of the ethical issue regarding the situation.

Applying DET techniques on the case, the listed questions are addressed the case scenario. This will give us the deep analysis of the overall case in precise and also the actions that were taken to overcome the problem and the solutions to prevent this kind of situation in future.

What is going on?

The case throws light upon a software company where a programmer named Anna was facing ethical issue. The ambitious programmer was working over the web services in heath sector in order to reach and help remote areas of the village, there is language and cultural barriers faced time to time in the area (Thomas 2015). There are certain technological and language barrier faced by these remote areas and there is a constant work done on this field.

In order to improve her knowledge and upgrade her career she did higher level study in this field with support of her manager Brian. She worked hard and with help of her the knowledge she built a new user interface that can easily interact with people of the remote areas. This was big step to abolish these differences between the remote communities. She created a new interface system to into more accessible form. Her work showed the efforts she had put in research and time to build such project (Jimenez 2016). She added cultural pictures that helped them connect with the interface and she avoided using any offensive or anything that could hurt the sentiment of the aboriginals. She arranged her ideas in a beautiful way that was both reasonable and technical. The new system made by her brought a lot of success to the company. The company won the national business award for positive use of ICT in the remote communities.

What are the issues?

There was many efforts that taken to build in the user interface system that could be easily accessible by the aboriginal communities (Burmeister 2017). This has brought the huge success to the company. Despite of all the efforts she took for the company by going through further studies and endless efforts she took to build the new system. She did not get any acknowledgement for the work.  The Employer of the Month award was been given to her but Brian took all the credits of her work and her efforts remained unacknowledged.

Who are affected?

The above incident gives us the knowledge the most affected one was Anna because she was not been known for her contribution or the hard work she have done for the company (Baumer et al. 2018). Her senior took credits in return of the support she got from him. Had she known that this was going to happen, she would not have trusted him with her work. She should not have shared the ideas she would be using in building the system.

What are the ethical issues and implications in this case?

The ethical issues that are reported in this case are given as follows:-

• The software company was facing one of the barriers that they were not able to mix up with the remote communities and the constant research was done to ensure that people could access the system.
• The credits taken by Brian instead of Anna who did all the work regarding building the new system are the signs that the systems that are used in the organization can be accessed by anybody and there is a lack of security regarding this case (Mason 2017). Had Anna taken steps to ensure the security of her system, there would not be such a case of her codes being forged.
• The ethical issue can also be considered under data breaching , the codes she wrote was taken by her manager because all the systems are interconnected in an organization are mainly are under outdated security framework this can be a problem for the system  and this might be a reason for the case depicted here.
• The ethical issue here can also be due to unreliable storage media. The codes and the algorithm that can be hacked or shoulder surfed easily.
• There is a breaking of code of ethics in this organization as the senior employee took the credits of junior employee and he can do so if any of the above problems was persisted.

Implications

The organization would have faced harsh consequences because of the case. The employees must have lost in the faith in the organization. There was a difference between the junior and senior employees. The fresh employees knowing the incident were hesitant to clear their doubts with their subordinates and seniors (Plemmons and Barker 2017). Few employees left without giving notice for resignation. There was a complaint filed against the manager. HR department investigated the case and then escalated the case towards the legal actions for forging work. The company which had a good national recognition for positive use of ICT techniques to aid remote communities sometime before is now trying hard to protect its status in the market after this case.

What could be done?

Regarding this case, the organization must look forward towards security of the computer systems.  The organization should pay attention to the problems faced by the employees of the organization. The complaints and the problems should be taken seriously and acted upon by listening to both the sides.  The company should create a work friendly and trusting atmosphere for the employees. The developers or the programmer must copyright their codes to ensure that no one could forge or alter them. they can also use private frame work and better security frame works to ensure that the information are not being leaked at any cost (Al-Saggaf, Burmeister and Weckert 2015). While working in a team, each member should have trackers to note down their progress and the efforts they put on their behalf towards the team. This will let them know about the amount of effort they have taken to complete the work and in what part they contributed to the work. 

ACS Analysis

The ACS code of ethics assures the professional conduct of the employees under the legislation. Under this code of ethics, there are six rules that need to be taken under consideration for assessing the professionalism of the employee. Any failure of the code is claimed under professionalism negligence. Here the case is analysed under these six codes.

Primacy of the Public Interest:

The company maintained the public interest as a basic requirement of the company. The user system ensured the aboriginal accessibility easy in spite of the cultural difference it has been facing before. Anna had gone for tertiary studies in order to come up with an idea to work over the system building (Ulvik, Smith and Helleve 2017).  The user system was accessible because of the cultural images helped them connect well with the system; the new user interface was much accessible by the remote communities to use web services.

The project mainly considered to connect people who lack technological exposure because of the cultural barriers. In order to connect them with the services, the organization opened the opportunities for the communities as well. There can be many job opportunities for aboriginal generated by the service like delivery systems, packaging and generating local reviews (Stiles and Boothroyd 2015). The core of the communities can now avail to those medical benefits, which was next to impossible before.

Enhancement of Quality of Life

The web services would help the aboriginals of the remote communities to have technological exposure and this would provide online help to the remote communities who had been facing hardships regarding health care (Thomas, Duessel and Meier 2017). They can access the online services and get the services on their systems at home. The user interface does involve enhancement of the quality of life of people living in the remote communities.

These communities can now easily avail the medical benefits, which was once impossible to reach without online exposure. Being cultural friendly user interface people can easily access the system without much trouble. The organization have tried to reach the deepest root of these communities and built a high network to aid them at one call. The web services are 24 /7 available so it can aid them in any case of emergency (Ferguson, Thornley and Gibb 2016).

The quality of life that once was led by the community is now improvised and worked on than before. There were many cases of serious problems because of lack of amenities.

Honesty

In this case, the efforts that are shown by Anna depicts her dedication towards her work. In order to increase her knowledge she opted for tertiary study about the field. Then, she worked hard in building a new interface system by doing a thorough research about the communities; she made sure that the images would be according to the, liking of the people and nothing that could offend them. Her efforts has contributed in Company’s success (Mannay and Morgan 2015). The company won National Business Award for positive use of ICT techniques because of her work.

Unlike the manager, Brian who broke this code of ethics and took the credits if all the efforts that was taken by Anna. He supported Anna for tertiary study but he ditched her by placing his name over all the contribution she made for the company depriving her with Employer of the Month Award. He tried to enhance his reputation based on her credits.

Competence

This is the case of competence; the programmer is confident about the work and have done tertiary study regarding the project. The skill was not miss represented by Anna; she was ambitious and confident that she can implement the idea of the project in this case.

The project mainly was for the interest of the remote aboriginals communities. The project was both financial and operationally enough for the stakeholders (Kakabadse and Kakabadse 2017). The project was made under user interest by having a god user interface. The interface included cultural images that made people connect with the system. The system was easily accessible and has made in public interest. There was no bribery taken in this case

However, in case of Brian he did misrepresent the work that done by Anna. In this case, the competence here is between the two employees; Brian took all of the credits because he did not want Anna to be ahead of him (Parker 2017). This was a non-ethical and a bad step taken by him. He should have been fair to her and rather work on himself to help in contributing the company through his hard work. The organization has other competition and in order to fulfil the expectation the employees needed to work hard and that was an opportunity for the employees to show their contribution towards the organization.

Professional development

In this case, Anna wanted to work on her career growth as well as helped the company with her work. She had achieved a lot knowledge regarding the technology as well as about the communities the company mainly see as a target audience (Rubin and Froehlich 2017). She had learned and grown as a better professional than before. The cultural research would have made her knowing the roots of communities, the language, the diversity in their culture and overall experience of the company. This would be a benefit to connect with the communities.

Unlike Brian who first was supportive regarding Anna’s work, but with time, he turned up towards her. He could have done enough research and aid her in the project so he could have an equal share in the work. His professional development is curbed because of his non-disciplinary actions.

Professionalism

The professionalism of the software company that have been analysed in this case is shown by the programmer who took keen interest in her work , contributed to exponential success of the company giving it a national recognition (Thomas, Burmeister and Low 2017). There was a contrary shown in this case when someone else in the company took her credits. There must be equal opportunity of growth irrespective of the position that employee holds. The legal action taken by the organization against the guilty shows equality among all the workers that have been working under this IT firm.

Conclusion

The report concludes with the two analysis of the same case in order to understand an ethical issue of an organisation. The report mainly focuses over the overall scenario of how the ethical issue turned out to be an inconvenience for the employee. The DET technique analysed the overall problem of the company that was by taking credits for some else’s work and ACS technique showed the code of ethics mentioned and violated in this case. The ACS system shows how to maintain a professionalism in a working organization and DET shows the overall scenario of the damage faced by the organization as a whole. In order to maintain a good work environment it is required to maintain a trustworthy relationship with the organization and among the colleagues. There must be some computer and network ethics that is need to be followed in order to maintain security. The above case depicts the chances of security threats and participatory ethical issue in case.

References

Al-Saggaf, Y., Burmeister, O. and Weckert, J., 2015. Reasons behind unethical behaviour in the Australian ICT workplace: An empirical investigation. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 13(3/4), pp.235-255.

Baumer, E.P., Berrill, T., Botwinick, S.C., Gonzales, J.L., Ho, K., Kundrik, A., Kwon, L., LaRowe, T., Nguyen, C.P., Ramirez, F. and Schaedler, P., 2018, January. What Would You Do?: Design Fiction and Ethics. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Supporting Groupwork (pp. 244-256). ACM.

Burmeister, O.K., 2017. Professional ethics in the information age. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 15(4), pp.348-356.

De Jimenez, R.E.L., 2016, November. Pentesting on web applications using ethical-hacking. In Central American and Panama Convention (CONCAPAN XXXVI), 2016 IEEE 36th(pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Ferguson, S., Thornley, C. and Gibb, F., 2016. Beyond codes of ethics: how library and information professionals navigate ethical dilemmas in a complex and dynamic information environment. International Journal of Information Management, 36(4), pp.543-556.

Kakabadse, N.K. and Kakabadse, A.K., 2017. ‘Profession’and Professional Ethics: An IT Perspective. In Creating Futures: Leading Change Through Information Systems (pp. 237-252). Routledge.

Koppman, S., Mattarelli, E. and Gupta, A., 2016. Third-world “sloggers” or elite global professionals? Using organizational toolkits to redefine work identity in information technology offshore outsourcing. Organization science, 27(4), pp.825-845.

Lehnert, K., Craft, J., Singh, N. and Park, Y.H., 2016. The human experience of ethics: a review of a decade of qualitative ethical decision?making research. Business ethics: A European review, 25(4), pp.498-537.

Mannay, D. and Morgan, M., 2015. Doing ethnography or applying a qualitative technique? Reflections from the ‘waiting field’. Qualitative Research, 15(2), pp.166-182.

Mason, R.O., 2017. Four ethical issues of the information age. In Computer Ethics (pp. 41-48). Routledge.

Mather, C. and Cummings, E., 2015. Unveiling the mobile learning paradox. Studies in health technology and informatics, 218, pp.126-31.’

Myers, M.D. and Venable, J.R., 2014. A set of ethical principles for design science research in information systems. Information & Management, 51(6), pp.801-809.

Parker, D.B., 2017. Rules of ethics in information processing. In Computer Ethics (pp. 17-20). Routledge.

Plemmons, D. and Barker, A.W., 2017. Anthropological ethics in context: an ongoing dialogue. Routledge.

Rubin, R. and Froehlich, T.J., 2017. Ethical aspects of library and information science. In Encyclopedia of Library and information Sciences (pp. 1468-1482). CRC Press.

Stiles, P.G. and Boothroyd, R.A., 2015. Ethical use of administrative data for research purposes. In Actionable Intelligence (pp. 125-155). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Thomas, G., Burmeister, O.K. and Low, G., 2017. Issues of Implied Trust in Ethical Hacking. In Proceedings of The 28th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, December(pp. 4-6).

Thomas, G., Duessel, P. and Meier, M., 2017. ETHICAL ISSUES OF USER BEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS THROUGH MACHINE LEARNING. Journal of Information System Security, 13(1).

Thomas, S.J., 2015. Exploring strategies for retaining information technology professionals: A case study.

Ulvik, M., Smith, K. and Helleve, I., 2017. Ethical aspects of professional dilemmas in the first year of teaching. Professional Development in Education, 43(2), pp.236-252.