1. Definition
Question 1: Pornography is immoral
1.0 Introduction
The title of this academic writing is the Importance of Ethics among IT professionals. As we know, the evolution of Information Technology (IT) in our life is like the quickness of light, which has elevated some ethical issue among IT professionals. They are challenged with the difficult and complicated decision making condition which has the access to the information, stuff and the right to privacy. One wrong choice that has been made would disrupt the rights and eventually created new social issue in the world of IT such as cybercrime, privacy concern and digital security issues. Nevertheless, the idea of ethic has been showed in our syllabus of education whether in school or university as moral but yet some are still unaware of it.
According to Velasquez (2010) in his writings in Issues in Ethics IIE V1 N1 stated that “Being ethical is also not the same as following the law. The law often incorporates ethical standards to which most citizens subscribe. But laws, like feelings, can deviate from what is ethical.”
Most people learn ethical norms at home, at school or in other social settings. Although most people acquire their sense of right and wrong during childhood, moral development occurs throughout life and human beings pass through different stages of growth as they mature. Ethical norms are so ubiquitous that one might be tempted to regard them as simple common sense. (Dr Resnik, 2010)
In this academic paper, we would like to elaborate more about the importance and benefits of practicing good ethics among the IT professionals in their working career. The importance of good ethics practices among the IT professionals that will be discussed are list as follow:
2.0 To Build Good Relationship within the IT and Related Communities
Building a good relationship within the IT and Related Communities are not simple yet it very importance. This is because, different people in the communities has different point of view as they are represent to other organisation image. By having a good relationship, the communication between IT and the communities may create a professional working environment as they are able to share, develop and discuss about the idea for the issue.
Software project manager, software engineer and system analyst must have a good relation and able to work under different condition in order to meet the user requirement. There could be some requirement and guile lines to meet the good relationship between IT and related communities in order to maintain the fairy and the ease of the communication.
The ethics in IT could provide a good and importance services such as allowing people with different language and culture are able to understand and respecting each other. Not only that, the good relation also can prevent the issues such as wrong information and requirement. In order to gain trust, the IT professionals must possess these interpersonal skills include knowledge about human behaviour and group processes, ability to understand the feelings, attitudes and intentions of others, and ability to clearly and credibly correspond.
This category of leadership skills also include ‘the skills required for coordination of actions of oneself and others (Mumford, Marks et al., 2000), and negotiation skills to reconcile differences among employee perspectives and establish mutually satisfying relationships (Mintzberg, 1973), and persuasion skills to influence others to more effectively accomplish organizational objectives (Yukl, 1989). These skills help to influence people and thereby makes dissemination of views and information easy (Northouse, 2009). This enables the leader to solve problems in a constructive and effective manner.
3.0 To Enhance Professional and Working Skills
Professional and working skills is the important thing that need to develop and captured. This because, the professional and working skill only comes with knowledge for certain field. By having ethical working environment, the people under the organisation are able to determine what importance is and what not to optimize the productivity and the quality of the product.
In IT area, professional and working skills are importance too. Despite in developing a good, efficient and accurate software project, IT workers need to more flexible and dynamic in order to meet the best and highest quality of the project. Good range of software project and management will result to good income and profit as many investors are willing to spend out their money.
In every works that are assigned, there must be procedures or steps. As we know, there are steps need to be done first before the other one. To having IT people follow every procedure in completing tasks give is also one of the good ethics that is need to be practiced. So, if these procedures are followed, therefore the people who are working on certain projects need to know every skill that is required in every procedure. When these happen, indirectly the people will possess the required skills in times. This is of course enhancing their skills.
4.0 To Train People to Make the Right Decision
It is very important to make the right decision. Making the right decisions is not something easy. Decision maker need to be very careful in making the decision. Observing and analyzing every single detail, source and problems that they are having are needed to avoid from making the wrong decision. Every single information gathered or given need to be consider in order to come up with a right decision.
It is obvious when we talk about making the right decision, accuracy straight come to the picture. Thomson and Schmoldt (2001) in their article ‘Ethics in computer software design and development’ write that “Accuracy is a broad topic and so has many associated ethical issues. System inputs, internal processing, and system outputs can all affect accuracy, and at each
level there are several important ethical problems.”
Apply the good ethics in making the decision is very important. People always do the decision that they think right as long it legal without consider the ethical side of the decision. This kind of thinking is wrong. Ethics is importance. This is because when good ethics are followed, this will make the decision fairer to others. This also can avoid from missing detail that need to be consider in making the right decision. It also can make the decision maker become more accurate and detail person. This will make the decision become more accurate. Good ethics in works will train a person to be a good analyst and better in making decision. Person like this are highly demanded in IT professionalism. This is because success or failures of the IT Company are depending to the decisions that have been made.
5.0 To Honor Confidentiality
Confidentiality is one of the core tenets of IT field confidential is indeed a very important thing because it will affect many important and sensitive information such as financial information, business strategy, business detail and personal details. Many information technology (IT) professionals lacked awareness of an interest in the cyber crime phenomenon. Using the confidential information for wrong uses is very unethical yet many of these information have been manipulated year by year. This showed that there are a people who unethically using this information for wrong uses. Back in 1990, not more than 100,000 people were able to log on to the Internet worldwide, but now there are hundreds millions of people are hooked using the net around the globe. The more people rely on IT, the more possibility of this confidentiality crime happen.
Confidentiality is commonly happen in conversations involving doctors and patients. Physicians are preventing by legal protections from revealing certain discussions with patients. Even under oath in court they are prevent to reveal the discussion. At least for 24 centuries the duty of physicians to keep the confidences of their patients has been seen important. According to the Hippocratic Oath: “Whatever, in connection with my professional service, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.”
People are worried about their personal data been reveal to the unwanted entities. In Malaysia also government already approve the new Personal data Protection Act. This is the chronological of the Malaysia’s Personal data Protection Act 2010, On November 19, 2009, the Personal Data Protection Bill 2010 was tabled in Parliament; on April 5, 2010, the Lower House passed the Bill (see WDPR, April 2010, page 20); and the Bill was passed without changes by the Upper House on May 6, 2010. Following Royal Assent and gazette, the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (“PDPA”) will be enforced. In the article of ‘Personal Data Protection Act 2010’ by Foong Cheng Leong and Halina Jael Abu Bakar in Legal Herald July-September 2010 it stated that:
Under the Act, “personal data” means “any information in respect of commercial transactions, which —
(a) Is being processed wholly or partly by means of equipment operating automatically in response to instructions given for that purpose;
(b) Is recorded with the intention that it should wholly or partly be processed by means of such equipment; or
(c) Is recorded as part of a relevant filing system or with the intention that it should form part of relevant filing system
Confidentiality is very importance in IT. Understanding and practicing good ethics cannot be tolerated. It is obvious that the confidentiality of IT information are relying on the good ethics by IT professional and people in doing their job. IT confidentiality also will give the positive or negative effect to the company and individual. If they promise the high ethical in working with confidential information, then they can gain trust from people.
6.0 To Honour Intellectual Property Rights
Violation of copyrights, patents, trade secrets and the terms of license agreements is prohibited by law in most circumstances. Even when software is not so protected, such violations are contrary to professional behavior. Copies of software should be made only with proper authorization. Unauthorized duplication of materials must not be condoned. Computing professionals are obligated to protect the integrity of intellectual property. Specifically, one must not take credit for other's ideas or work, even in cases where the work has not been explicitly protected by copyright, patent.
According to Richard Stallman, he claims that all information should be free, and all programs should be available for copying, studying and modifying by anyone who wishes to do so [Stallman, 1992]. Others argue that software companies or programmers would not invest weeks and months of work and significant funds in the development of software if they could not get the investment back in the form of license fees or sales [Johnson, 2011]. Today's software industry is a multibillion dollar part of the economy; and software companies claim to lose billions of dollars per year through illegal copying. Many people think that software should be ownable, but personally owned programs for one's friends should also be permitted [Nissenbaum, 1996]). The software industry claims that millions of dollars in sales are lost because of such copying. Ownership is a complex matter, since there are several different aspects of software that can be owned and three different types of ownership which is copyrights, trade secrets, and patents. One can own the following aspects of a program:
• The source code which is written by the programmer in a high-level computer
language like Java or C++.
• The object code, which is a machine-language translation of the source code.
• The algorithm, which is the sequence of machine commands that the source
code and object code represent.
• The look and feel of a program, which is the way the program appears on the
screen and interfaces with users.
A very controversial issue today is owning a patent on a computer algorithm. A patent provides an exclusive monopoly on the use of the patented item, so the owner of an algorithm can deny others use of the mathematical formulas that are part of the algorithm. Mathematicians and scientists are outraged, claiming that algorithm patents effectively remove parts of mathematics from the public domain, and thereby threaten to cripple science.
In addition, running a preliminary patent search to make sure that new program does not violate anyone's software patent is a costly and time consuming process. As a result, only very large companies with big budgets can afford to run such a search. This effectively eliminates many small software companies, stifling competition and decreasing the variety of programs available to the society [The League for Programming Freedom, 1991].
7.0 Conclusion
It is important to realise the core values that support the ethical principles of individual professional conduct. While there are societal and cultural differences that need to be taken into account, the values of library and information service should become an intrinsic aspect of an individual’s personal values. Ethical conduct needs to be promoted by professional associations to ensure that the standards of conduct are consistent with the highest levels of professional service. A code of conduct can promote ethical understanding, and the library association can offer training and advice in ethical conduct to ensure that individuals and library institutions comprehend the distinction between ethical and unethical behaviour
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