Ethical Implications In ICT Essay.

What can be done to make the users and ICT professionals perform their actions related to ICT according to the lawfully correct ethics?

When it comes to topics related on Information and Communication Technology, every subject focuses on the technicalities of the topic. This usually focuses around the importance of the ICT devices or the way Information and Communication Technology is handling the world. The less discussed topic about this is however, the ethical implications related to the ICT world. The topic that often goes out of context in this regard is the way by which an ICT professional would ideally perform their task in order to be morally correct towards their professional as well as personal life (Whitehouse et al. 2016). Following would be a literature review presented on this topic which would share lights on the ethical aspect of an ICT professional and how it affects the approach and propagation of the ICT world. This would be performed by following few steps that would first include the identification of this topic and the need for researching on ethics for the ICT world. Then this would be followed by the research methodology that has been adopted for reviewing the literature on this topic, based on the detailed justification for the inclusion and exclusion principles taken under consideration for this regard. Then amongst the 10 articles reviewed in this matter, a similarity between the themes of two of them would be established to ensure that the analysis and synthesis regarding the topic has been justified. Finally, there would be a research question framed from the analysis that have been derived from the literature review done so far regarding the topic.

ICT or Information and Communication Technology is a subject that dwells in the matters of communication between different devices, especially computers and other connecting devices, and sharing of information. This has seen a considerable change and exponential rise in the contemporary times that deals with a lot of professional issues while its propagation. It can be seen that the ethical way to perform any work is neglected in many cases, even disregarding the matter that this might bring about legal complicacies in the future (Rogerson et al. 2017). In many cases, it has been found that even littlest of ethically wrong professional acts can cause a bigger problem in the long run. Even not from the professional aspect, it is also to be taken care about that if the use of Information and Communication Technology is following the ethical way of conduct. Many incidences have proven that not just the professionals of ICT are at fault for not abiding by the ethical laws of Information and Communication Technology but the use of ICT does not always follow the suit for maintaining ethical implications related to the same.

Research Methodology

This is the reason that for this ICT based research the topic of ethical implications in Information and Communication Technology is being researched about in this particular literature review. To find out the positive and negative impacts of ICT in both professional and societal as well as legal aspects, this literature review is being conducted on this topic (Warren and Lucas 2016). Dwelling about the same topic with different research aspects with the help of 10 different journal articles would help in zeroing out the common themes about the topic and exactly what implications ethically exists in the Information and Communication Technology world.

It can be reason that since ethics in ICT is not trained about to every other person, there can be lack of awareness in people about the legal aspects of their actions when performing an Information and Communication Technology work (Stahl et al. 2018). Many instances have proven that there are issues about the ethical thinking of a person before committing to an ICT based work. A person may find himself or herself performing unethical actions just out of sheer ignorance. This is why this subject needs to be researched about in details only because this would creating awareness amongst people, both professionals and unprofessional individuals, to judge whether their actions in Information and Communication Technology related works are justified morally or by the law.

The research methodology that has been followed to present a literature review on the ethical implications of ICT or Information and Communication Technology related works has been conducted over reviewing and analyzing several articles that have been available on the websites search engines and that has been found in different libraries. The search engines has been thoroughly looked about with correct key terms to bring in the actual journals related to the topic. Hey baby no search called ICT ethical issues it would only present the issues that are related to the Information and Communication Technology based work. Thus, databases and various search engines including the books that were searched besides the journal articles had been selected with the help of some inclusion techniques as well as exclusion techniques which are to be explained as below:

Exclusion reasons: They had to be specific keyword used for this topic on the search engines that would not only bring about the issues but also present search results about what the proper ethical ways are to perform any work related to Information and Communications Technology. For this it is required that the search engines be search with the term ethics in ICT. After these keywords that entered, there were a number of published journals that had appeared on the search engine for further reviewing (McDermid 2015). Many of the journals were excluded from the list that has been found only because they did not serve the purpose of the topic and often was drifted apart from the actual essence of the journal topic. Some of the journals were also excluded due to their publication issues.

Inclusion and Exclusion Techniques

Inclusion reasons: From the articles that were found in the search engines, the ones that had been selected had sole focus on the topic providing several meaningful insights about the ethical implications and the proper ethical ways in which ICT based work in information and communication technology in environment should be performed. Including these articles in the research technique for the literature review where based on different ICT ethical implications but they all have been focused on providing information on the ethical aspect of both ICT use and professionalism (Stahl, Timmermans and Flick 2017). Thus all the articles for this literature review has been narrowed down based on their relevance to the research topic. This decision of relevance found in the articles with decided due to the fact that no other article only declared the issues but also provided the lawful information about the correct way of performing all the ICT based works as well as the professional way of handling and Information and Communication Technology environment.

Amongst all 10 the articles that has been researched in the topic of Information and Communication Technology or ICT based ethics, every one of them focused on the common topic of ethical legal and social aspects of Information and Communication Technology. However, two of these articles has been essentially informative given their way of providing information on the specific topic as well as their conviction in sticking to the topic as well as providing to the point information about the topic mentioned in the journals. One of these papers focuses on the qualification and ethics education from the perspective of ICT professionals and another focuses on the ethical legal and social aspects of Information and Communication Technology. The common theme in about both of these is that the journals focuses on the soul aspect of the use of Information and Communication Technology but from different aspects. One from the perspective of the users and another from the perspective of the professionals.

The initial focus that the first paper or the journal article has is the focus on the ethical education that the ICT professional receives while pursuing their ICT degrees. The journal article raises question on the qualification and the basic ethic education that they received as a part of the ICC degrees and how does this help them to recognize the ethical problems that they are facing regularly in the workplace and what do they do to address them. According to Al-Saggaf, Burmeister and Schwartz (2017), even if these professionals are recognizing the ethical problems, how are these professionals addressing them and are their actions been influenced solely on their personal choice of ethics. The journal article also dwells about reviews every ICT professional have about the relation of the education that the received as the part of the ICT degrees and the ethics in professionalism they perform at the ICT workplace. The survey about this channel has been a quantitative one that focused on the Australian ICT professionals who participated in a survey conducted (Grant 2016). It had focused on the issues during the survey which had later revealed that the ICT professionals reported that they were having various levels of qualifications in ethics education or training that where is somewhat helpful in reporting to the various levels of qualifications that they have found during their work and they have a dress them identifying the ethical problems. Although there were other employees also who were not qualified with the degrees in ICT qualifications and it was found that the employees having ICT degrees were influenced by then non ICT qualification workers (Warren and Burmeister 2017). The survey had found that the participants who have revealed having various levels of qualifications had not been influenced by their own personal ethics or any other factors that had made the ethics education or the training develop their professionalism.

Common Themes in Literature Review

The next articles focuses on the definition of ethics and law and describes effectively what I think means and what does their implications are according to the law. According to Mishra (2015), all the technological advances has both positive and negative impacts on the society. The journal article also clearly defines the ways in which uses violate the ethical laws of utilizing Information and Communication Technology. The journal describes clearly all the illegal ways of violating ethical laws of ICT starting from data piracy of copyrighted materials, music, data, video, software and other true Cybercrimes, forgery, sabotage, hacking and even heinous acts like spam, worms, and viruses. The violation of privacy security protection and integrity of confidential and personal data and information caused by these unethical acts by the uses of ICT is the main aspect of this journal (Chusavitina and Zerkina 2015). The journal also clearly depicts how these effectively harm the ICT work environment and the individuals or organization that fall victim to these acts of unethical approach from the user’s end.

The research question that have cropped out in relation to this topic regarding the ethical implications of ICT related work according to the law can be framed as follows:

Conclusion

Thus, it can be concluded from the above literature review that, one of the most neglected issue in the ICT world is the ethical implications behind it that justifies the actions of an ICT profession, however; this topic is extremely important to carry out the ICT actions in a proper and justified way which also has to performed in a morally correct way. The literature review presented on this topic focused on the ethical aspect of an ICT professional and how it affects the approach and propagation of the ICT world. In the first step the research topic has been thoroughly identified and the need for researching on ethics for the ICT world. This had been followed by the research methodology that has been adopted for reviewing the literature on this topic, based on the detailed justification for the inclusion and exclusion principles taken under consideration for this regard. Then amongst the 10 articles reviewed in this matter, a similarity between the themes of two of them had been established to ensure that the analysis and synthesis regarding the topic has been justified. Finally, the research question framed from the analysis that have been derived from the literature review done so far regarding the topic.

References

Al-Saggaf, Y., Burmeister, O.K. and Schwartz, M., 2017. Qualifications and ethics education: the views of ICT professionals. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21.

Chusavitina, G.N. and Zerkina, N.N., 2015. Informational ethics teaching for future information technology specialist. In SGEM 2015 INTERNATIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE ON SOCIAL SCIENCES AND ARTS (pp. 515-521).

Grant, C., 2016. Improving Business and ICT Ethics Education–the Potential of Positive Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry.

McDermid, D., 2015. Ethics in ICT: an Australian perspective. Pearson Higher Education AU.

Mishra, M., 2015. Ethical, Legal and Social aspects of Information and Communication Technology. arXiv preprint arXiv:1507.08447.

Rogerson, S., Miller, K.W., Winter, J.S. and Larson, D., 2017. Information systems ethics–challenges and opportunities. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society.

Stahl, B.C., Rainey, S., Harris, E. and Fothergill, B.T., 2018. The role of ethics in data governance of large neuro-ICT projects. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 25(8), pp.1099-1107.

Stahl, B.C., Timmermans, J. and Flick, C., 2017. Ethics of Emerging Information and Communication TechnologiesOn the implementation of responsible research and innovation. Science and Public Policy, 44(3), pp.369-381.

Warren, M. and Burmeister, O.K., 2017. Research on Applied Ethics involving emerging ICT technologies. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 21.

Warren, M. and Lucas, R., 2016. Ethics and ICT: Why all the fuss?. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society, 14(2), pp.167-169.

Whitehouse, D., Duquenoy, P., Kimppa, K.K., Burmeister, O.K., Gotterbarn, D., Kreps, D. and Patrignani, N., 2016. Twenty-five years of ICT and Society: Codes of Ethics and Cloud Computing. ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, 45(3), pp.18-24.