Ethical Issues Confronting Information Professional

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract: Ethics in information management context involves ethical manner when handling in the on formation management field, this is including the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information. Plus in today world, the information became fragile with the rapidly increase in information technology and also the phenomenon of the information overload. Therefore this paper has specifically focused the ethical issues that became a big question mark to the information professional governing their task in handling information management against the right professional ethic.

Keywords: Ethics, Information Technology, Information Management, Information Professional

Introduction

In today’s information and technology environment, ethics became one of the hot topics to debate. The ethic is, in a simple terminology is the action toward what is right and what is wrong. The word ethic itself cannot be separate from the morality and values, because they are carry the similar meaning though in different concept. As cited in Library of Oracle Think Quest, value is the qualities or ideas which each of us cares about and consider important. They can be good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable. Values are the elements on which we base our actions. Meanwhile, morality is one’s individual perception of right and wrong. Morality does not directly affect others; it does influence the attitudes and values of a society. On the other hand, ethics refers to a set or system of moral ideals. Just as it takes the thoughts and ideas of many people to make up an ideology, ethics are a product of society. Being so, it is not surprising that many ethical issues deal with the relationship between the individual and the group.

In information age today, the issues arise like ownership, pattern, and copyright became one of the hottest problem and the information professional dilemma because of this dynamic nature. The dynamic nature means some components of ethical codes that were perfectly appropriate in previous generations may no longer apply. Therefore there are ethical issues that are being raised by information professional will be the focus of this paper. This paper not only discussing on the technologist but also the other aspect including the information management. Here the focus group will divide to five broad categories that are privacy, ownership, control, accuracy and security.

Methodology

In completing this term paper, primary and secondary literatures are used to enable in depth understanding of this arising issues more. The primary literature includes the accessing from the online journal and online databases. The collecting information is by the previous article reference and also the related paper. Other than that, the secondary literature also used in order to help in collecting information. The secondary literature is based on the relates or discusses information originally presented at the other discussion or article. Besides that the observation also being made in order to help understand this problem better.

Definitions and concepts of Ethics

There are various definitions of ethics. It can be defined as Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct as cited in Wikipedia. According to Tomas Paul and Linda Elder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking, "most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law", and don't treat ethics as a stand-alone concept. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy states that the word ethics is "commonly used interchangeably with 'morality' and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual. While information ethics has been defined as "the branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society. Information technology affects common issues such as copyright protection, intellectual freedom, accountability, privacy, and security.

In this paper, it will examines 10 ethical issues that fall into the five categories of privacy, ownership, control, accuracy, and security that being proposed by Chief Information Officer, Jeff Relkin. This broad scope will be then drill down in order for a user to understand better. The first issue is the privacy, where it is concern on the information availability are justify to use. The census give out an amount information of citizen for a variety of purposes, for example national security, tax collection and demographic. The corporation also does the same for their business matter, such as to increase revenue, control expenses and others. This massive of data however becoming easy to retrieve since the use of sharing database makes it is possible. Therefore the big question mark here is the information that being collected can be architected for another purpose without making any clarification. In privacy category, there is also issue on the effort and expenses needed in considering of data access and privacy. The information such as pension and social security number being placed in the organizational database and at some point the data needed to be use thus the system will produced the output. The data has been questioned its privacy and the authorized person that can retrieve of the data. The issue here is whether the privacy is secure enough and the retrieval process whether it is under an authorized person.

Up next is the ownership. The ownership focusing on the nondisclosure agreement that the IT personnel need to complete when working at the new place. According Wikipedia a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), also known as a confidentiality agreement (CA), confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), proprietary information agreement (PIA), or secrecy agreement, is a legal contract between at least two parties that outlines confidential material, knowledge, or information that the parties wish to share with one another for certain purposes, but wish to restrict access to or by third parties. It's a contract through which the parties agree not to disclose information covered by the agreement. An NDA creates a confidential relationship between the parties to protect any type of confidential and proprietary information or trade secrets. As such, an NDA protects nonpublic business information. However, the knowledge and the skill that developed when working with the company cannot be brain-format. Thus, the nondisclosure agreement seems to be not effective way to restrain the IT personnel to keep off about the technology to the other hiring firm. Besides that, is the real assets belong to the employee and the asset that developed when working. It is the same situation as earlier as skill and knowledge cannot be claimed and formatted easily. Thus, the problem such as claimed pattern, and ownership are being arise.

A part of that, control also becoming an issue in this information age. Every company has its own intranet in order to help their employee to work effective and efficient. However, the monitoring of the employee activities in the intranet is one of a kind of organization control. The common practice is to control and monitor employee on how they are using the technology. The monitoring involved the email monitoring, internet monitoring and also video monitoring. The issues being rise by Jeff Relkin, is this became the ethical issue when the company monitoring the email that using of their intranet though the employee should be know regarding this monitoring virtually. Under the control topics, the other issue that comes out is the violation of gathered data to employee privacy right. During the hiring process, usually the employer will do background checking to the future employee. The previous company is obligated to tell that employer everything that they need to. However, the action could be questionable because it could be violating the privacy right of the employee. According to the Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, workers have the right to give consents or refusals regarding the collection, recording and storing of their own information. The surveillances by the employer should be addressed with the international rules set by the International Labor Organization and labor unions should try to formulate any group contracts the way they reflect much of these international guidelines.

In any of digital age, the accuracy plays a huge role. In the ethical issues confronting the IT personnel, the accuracy also became one of the parts. The information that being publish to the internet requires a high accuracy in order to provide user exact and correct information. Thus, who is responsible for the authenticity, fidelity and accuracy of information? Similarly, who is to be held accountable for errors in information and how is the injured party to be made whole? This question became issues because all fingers will be pointed to the information personnel since they are close to the work and the management of information. But, under what basis that this level of accuracy in the responsibility of the information personnel. Information personnel did the all the information management task, but the accuracy of the information can be argue because of the information is coming from the overall operation of an organization. Besides that the accuracy problem issues stated by Jeff Relkin is the implication of potential error have been anticipated. The larger the system, the larger the database thus may produces the large number of error. At the end of the day, all pointing to the IT personnel responsibilities to anticipated those negative outcomes.

The last ethical issues confronting IT personnel is the security. Security played the most important part of the information technology era. Technology presented the whole new of security challenges. Network can be breached, personal information can be stolen, system can be hacked and many more insecure of IT violation. The issues here is how far can and should management go in determining the security risks and what level can be consider reasonable. The security evolves everyday and so does the security risk. Organization generally have policies for dealing with security breach but no specific policies to address the liability exposure of IT personnel or the organization itself.

Ethics Conceptual Theory

Table 1: Ethics Theory

Challenges in Encouraging Ethical Behaviors Among Information / Information Technology Personnel

In respond of the discussion earlier there are several challenges in developing ethical society. The challenges are;

Resistance to change attitudes and behaviors

The information technology personnel reluctant to improve themselves and to adapt with the new information society era. They are resisting changing attitudes and behavior and also implementing the new advanced technology. This is became a challenges since the world today crucially depend on the ongoing information technology. Their resistance will become a huge disadvantage to the organizational. The factor of this reluctant is the information personnel too much comfortable with the existing technology thus they refuse to use the new one. If they need to use the new technology, they have to start all over again and going to the user training. It has to bear in mind that change is inevitable; and change is good; but the change must be consistent with corporate objectives

The challenges of new technology

The technology keep upgrading and updating each day. Thus the awareness about the new technology in the market is crucially needed. The information personnel play a huge part since they have to cope with the advances of the technology. The evolution of new technology forced the information professional to always keep in track with it.

The challenges in job responsibilities

The information professional is responsible for all the information that being in the system, they tend to be the person who in charge of the entire burden. As mentioned before the information personnel will be the top front people when error in information, the level of accuracy, the security breach and others relating to the IT. Since information technology systems have to run all the time, pressure is mounted on IT experts to ensure the accuracy and availability of these systems. Many big organizations which need to operate 24 hours will require a standby IT team to cater for any issues which might arise during the course of operation. This pressure results into stress and work overload which sometimes results into Imperfection.

The violation of right

In the discussion before there is a lot of right that being stated. The right that have been discussed before showed that the employee does have much of right against the organization rules and regulation. The employee especially information professional will tend to be less motivate and insecure in the workplace.

Recommendations to Address the Challenges in Encouraging Ethical Behaviors Among Information / Information Technology Personnel

In response to these challenges, several recommendations are proposed as follows:

Top management strategy

In order to encourage the ethical behavior among information technology personnel, the top management have to give motivation support and the exact foundation. If the top management itself didn’t apply the ethical behavior then, how should the others personnel apply that concept. Therefore, according to Ronald S Sims (1992) providing a theoretical foundation of ethical perspective can be applied to all level and also identifying sets of ethical practices might serve as example for organization behavior regardless their department and functions. In effect, the top management are able to become the motivation to their personnel in order to adapt the ethical values such as fair, honest, respectful, responsive, trustworthy, accountable, and responsible, in the organization. In effect, many leaders have learned that ethics improves organizational performance and, ultimately, the bottom line as cited by Paine (2003).

Performance management

Performance management involves the performance review and how it could affect the quality task handling. It is also measure the performance and evaluate. It help the information personnel to indicate their performance and developing the SMART evalution.By measuring the appropriateness and efficiencies, the information personnel will be able to distinguish the task that fit the goal and objective of organization. Performance indicator help information personnel to measure progress quality and service towards achieving the organization objectives. The combination of input, output and outcome could

The Right in Information Society

According to the Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, workers have the right to give consents or refusals regarding the collection, recording and storing of their own information. This is vital right for workers so that their dignity and right to privacy get respects and they can be treated fairly while they are working. Employee surveillance by companies can invade employees¡¯ private lives as well as labor control, given the fact that there are blurred lines between work and leisure in terms of time and place, due to new powerful communication and surveillance technologies. While most constitutions around the world protect the dignity of workers and the right to privacy, few countries have any rules and regulations in place to control companies that monitor their workers through sophisticated technologies. Therefore, surveillances by the employer should be addressed with the international rules set by the International Labor Organization and labor unions should try to formulate any group contracts the way they reflect much of these international guidelines.

Conclusion

As a nutshell the ethical issues that have been confronting the information professional or in other term, the IT manager that have been arising by Jeff Relkin still have a long things to solve. The ethical behavior itself define as a set of behavior that accepted in the certain environment. However, in this case the issues cannot be simply to be noted as black or white. It is because, the right manner to the organization could be the wrong thing to the employee and vice versa. Thus in this paper, there are many question that being pointed that may have no answer for it. The information technology today make a lot difference to the society and changes. This paradigm shift brings new ethical and juridical problems which are mainly related to issues that stated earlier.

Despite of this, there is professional codes that offer a basis for making ethical decisions and applying ethical solutions to situations involving information provision and use which reflect an organization’s commitment to responsible information service. Evolving information formats and needs require continual reconsideration of ethical principles and how these codes are applied. Considerations regarding information ethics influence "personal decisions, professional practice, and public policy". Therefore, ethical analysis must provide a framework to take into consideration "many, diverse domains" regarding how information is distributed.