IT Professional Responsibilities toward the Society - Essay Example

IT Professional Responsibilities toward the Society Computing professionals have a lot of responsibility toward the members of their own profession as well as the society at large. The work they do has a lot of room for invasion of privacy and threats of security if the computing professionals are not as cautious as they need to be. Metadata is the information regarding data. Different computer programs implant the data into the output of programs during its creation and saving. Metadata contained in the electronic documents is of immense use in a document’s drafting stages as it facilitates the collaboration by means of adding comments, recording information about the different versions of documents, and tracking revisions.

Nevertheless, metadata can be dangerous if the document gets passed on to others electronically. This can happen, for instance, during the submission of an electronic document into a court, distribution of the documents among the adverse groups, or during the document’s circulation to the opposing counsel during negotiations. “The document’s metadata may contain hidden information that the sender would not want to share with the recipients, such as comments on revisions or the time and by whom the comments were made” (Day et al., 2008, p. 12).

Computing professionals assume this responsibility to be very careful in their handling of the metadata for their own safety, safety of their coworkers, and of the whole society. The responsibilities of the computing professionals extend beyond compliance with the policies and goals of their company to include the interests of the society at large. “Lack of security awareness and training, operating system design and security, open source issues, design complexity and multiple layer approach are some of the current issues with ICT” (Beqiri, n.d.).

Computing professionals need to have a firm hold over all these areas to secure the information whose leakage may put the future of the society in the hands of the enemies. The responsibility of computing professionals toward members of their profession and the society translates into the broader area of business ethics. Over the passage of time, organizations have become quite experienced and informed about the delicate nature of information technology issues. This has brought a change in the employers’ attitude toward what skills they want in the information technology professionals.

“When employers of newly qualified information systems professionals are asked what it is they would most like them to know, the answer is very rarely technical. Much more commonly, the answer is an understanding of the business environment” (Bott, 2005, xix). Organizations that are not committed to the social responsibility change either in the face of purposeful intervention or financial penalty (Dutfield et al., n.d.). When the fundamental purpose of an organization becomes social benefits, positive achievements cannot be guaranteed.

Organizations that have shared vision with respect to the social responsibility need to deliver what they commit for irrespective of whether they are for-profit or not-for-profit. Therefore, the more organizations comply with business ethics, the more empowered their computing professionals are to work in a safe manner that is in the best interest of the organization and the society. References:Beqiri, E n.d., Information and Communication Technology security, University of East London, [Online] Available at http://www.kaspersky.com/images/information_and_communication_technology_security_issues-10-75856.

pdf [accessed: 8 March 2013]. Bott, F 2005, Professional Issues in Information Technology, UK: The British Computer Society. Day, DC et al 2008, Guidelines for Practising Ethically with New Information Technologies, Canadian Bar Association, [Online] Available at http://www.cba.org/cba/activities/pdf/guidelines-eng.pdf [accessed: 8 March 2013]. Dutfield, S et al n.d., Social Responsibility, [Online] Available at http://www.publicsphereproject.org/node/207 [accessed: 8 March 2013].