Professional Issues in Information Technology - Assignment Example

Professional Issues in Information Technology (PIIT) Relflective Learning Student Name : Musab Alhazme Student ID :7036302 Tutor : Maryam Nickpour Tutorial Time : Wednesday (12:30PM) Count Words (3150) What kinds of behaviours might be important for an ICT professional working in a group or team with members from a wide variety of different backgrounds (e.g. diversity of skills, gender, age, religion, and ethnicity)? How might I need to change my behaviours in order to become more effective in such a setting? Today’s work place is a diverse and dynamic environment far from what used to be the case a few years ago. There are more women in the labour force today. There are different people in terms of culture religion and age in the work place today as companies hope to get the right combination to meet requirements or stay ahead of the competition (Gudykunst, 2003). Working in teams is a very common phenomenon in the work place today. As an IT professional I should be alive to this reality. An IT expert is expected just like any other professional to showcase some behaviour and conduct that will help their team achieve cohesiveness as it seeks to meet its objectives. Some of the behaviours expected of an ICT expert include but not limited to: Cultural awareness- in a diversified team, there are probably people from different cultures and age. It is important to know what actions they consider culturally right or wrong and so restrain myself as much from doing them if they feel offended. Emotional intelligence- a team is composed of human beings who are emotional. It is important then to learn how to criticize opinions in a constructive manner that may not demoralize and also how to encourage personal contributions from members Ethics- as a team member should always uphold good manners such as timekeeping, polite language, self-control and other personal etiquette for better relations with team members I particularly need to improve on how I criticize people, I think my approach is a bit brutal and may cause more harm than good in ruined relations. This may affect group effectiveness and as such I should work on how to criticize positively through reading teamwork books. What behaviours are conducive to sound team performance and behaviours? What did I contribute to a sound team performance? What could I have done better to make sure my team worked better? How could I have helped others in my team to perform better in the team? Teams are a combination of different people with different backgrounds and way of working. It might be the different case though with a team that works in one particular way. It is however rare to find a scenario where team members think the same and have similar opinions and thought. That team may be ineffective in the sense that teams should have a heterogeneous composition to achieve balanced results (Hackman, 2002). What I know for certain is that a team has one or several common goals that it seeks to achieve. Members of a sound team have to behave in such a manner that they achieve cohesiveness and efficiency in their quest to reach their goal(s). Some of the behaviours include but not limited to: Positive criticism- there must be criticism in a team if good decisions are to be made. Criticism helps in challenging assumptions and thus facts prevail. Without criticism a team may have ill informed conclusions or lose momentum Leadership- there must be a person leading the team depicting qualities of a leader such as being visionary, motivating and ability to control team members. Good communication between team members is also important to share ideas and opinions without fear of negative criticism. Respect for laid out rules I personally respected the group’s rules such as time keeping and delivery of assigned work in time. This helped the team achieve its objectives in time although with a few hiccups here and there. Maybe I was harsh to people who broke rules or delivered poor quality work. This ruined relations in the team and I wish I had done it a bit differently. I could have constructively criticized the team members by mentioning the importance of the task at hand. What are some of the key professional roles and responsibilities for a modern ICT Professional? How might these affect me in my future work? Professionalism means belonging in to a body that has perfected the art or science of doing a particular work for the benefit of the society. Professionals are bound by norms and responsibilities that they are supposed to fulfil if at all they want to remain as respected professional in their respective bodies (Tittle, 2000). I believe for ICT profession, it is no different; there are roles and responsibilities bestowed upon ICT professionals that they are supposed to take care of. Some of the key roles and responsibilities as noted by (Salehnia, 2002) include; Safeguarding people’s, businesses’ or organizations’ private information- Leaking out private or confidential information is highly unethical and criminal in most jurisdictions. Keeping crucial data safe from criminals is also the responsibility of an ICT professional mandated to do so. Maintaining integrity of data and system is also a paramount responsibility of ICT professionals. An ICT professional is also expected to facilitate delivery of computer and system services to the people who deserve such services and at the specified time. These issues are very important to me as I have to uphold them if at all I am to be respected as a competent and professional ICT person. Privacy and cube security are some of the major issues in IT today. Businesses, individuals and governments expect high moral standards from ICT experts who have a choice between using their knowledge responsibly or for criminal intent (Solove, 2011). What kinds of changes do I feel have occurred to the way I perceive the work of ICT professionals during this unit? During this course, I have come tom appreciate the good work that has been done by earlier players in the ICT profession. There is so much ICT knowledge in the hands of people today who may not necessarily be ICT professionals. They use such knowledge for selfish gain. I thought it was a nice idea to have knowledge and skills to penetrate systems without authority but I have come to realize that being a professional is using the knowledge that you have for the benefit of the society and those you interact with in your career. Over time I have learned that it is a combination of knowledge and discipline that defines who a professional is. Without one of the two elements, then one cannot be termed a professional. The society is largely interdependent, as an ICT expert I expect a doctor to do his work competently with my interests in heart for the benefit of the larger society and me. The doctor also entrusts me as an ICT expert with critical information systems and data expecting that I would have his interests at heart too. For society to function then, I am convinced that all professionals need to be responsible and do just what their profession expects of them. ICT and Innovation in the Public Space Innovation is the ability to come up with new ways of doing things. The information technology field has over time become a field associated with innovation to transform the way we communicate, travel, manufacture and even relate with others. This presentation by Professor Duong Grant emphasized the need for continuous innovation to improve on the gains made so far and also come up with new solutions to older problems. I found this course really informative in the sense that it highlighted some of the disruptive technologies in the 21st century that have the capability of transforming the economic and social landscape in the world today. Some of these disruptive technologies include 3D printing, Cloud technology, autonomous vehicles and a few more revolutionary technologies. This course reviewed US Industry trends for the past 50 years to build a case of why innovation in both public and private sectors is necessary to maintain competitiveness. I learned from the analysis in this course that the industry trend in US has been changing gradually with former dominant firms such as IBM finding it difficult to stay ahead of the competition than it was the case a few years back. Reinvention and creativity seem to be the only way for the firms to remain relevant in a market where consumers have been slowly acquiring power and information rapidly. Technology according to the presentation by Professor Grant is the driver of innovation in industries that are posting good results from their operations. It is therefore upon leaders in organizations to support and encourage innovation and creativity in their firms to ensure sustained growth and productivity of their businesses. The governments can only address the matter through policies that support growth of technology sectors and also direct injection of funds into technology projects. The government should also invest heavily on developing the appropriate technology infrastructure such as research laboratories, broadband penetration. Ensuring healthy competition will also go a long way in ensuring ICT innovation in the public space. I expected to find good case studies regarding the role of ICT n the public sector but the course relied heavily on theoretical discussion. However I found the course to be educative in highlighting why we cannot as a society assume that we have nothing more to be innovated. There are still so many problems in our communities. The economies and consumer preferences keep on changing. As such businesses need to innovate always to remain relevant in a highly dynamic and competitive world. IT ethics and professional conduct Professor Doug Grant prepared this presentation. The course first delved into the issue of what is wrong and what is right in as far as IT practices are concerned. It went further to enquire why some actions such as phone hacking maybe considered wrong and why others are considered as right. How the question was asked with real life examples made everyone of us and particularly me to understand what ethics is all about. I learned that ethics is not necessarily a legal obligation but a moral obligation to do what is right. I learned that in many cases where ethical considerations are involved, there is a great possibility of the law not being adequately clear on the issue. Ethics therefore seems to me to be the moral dimension of doing what is right without regarding the law. Morals play a very big role in advising the contents of a given law or regulation within a society (Cohen, 2004). I have had problems earlier identifying where the thin line between ethics and law falls. However after this presentation I could clearly differentiate between the two. I also understood why in some instances one would be acting within the law but ironically acting unethically. It’s because the law does not capture all ethical conducts that a society is supposed to abide to. Surprisingly, it occurred to me also that it is rare for one to break the law by acting ethically. To me then, ethics can be considered a supreme law of a society from which other laws stem, a view shared by Schultz (2010). This presentation did engage us on the issue of being professional in our work as IT experts in order to maintain ethical conduct. Professionals are guided by norms and ethics that safeguard the reputation of their professional body. This presentation highlighted some examples of ethical issues in ICT, which happen to be usual culprits such as password theft, hacking, monitoring and accessing private information. I was impressed by how the presentation used ICT scandals to explain ethical matters in the industry such as the Victoria Police scandal involving policemen sharing pornographic materials via their work computers and also about EasyJet and Carphone using software to spy on customers. From this course I learned that ICT experts being equipped with a lot of skills and knowledge not available to other people should use such advantage for the betterment of the society and not break rules and laws to commit unethical actions a contention held by Salehnia (2002) too. Privacy and IT Privacy is the right to lead a personal life that is free from monitoring and disturbance from others individuals and organizations (Solove, 2011). I believe personal information should remain to be just personal information not unless the person whose information concerns wants the information to be public. To me then I view it as highly unethical and illegal to some extent that someone can try to expose somebody’s personal information. Keeping information private in this age of computing and Internet technology and applications has proved to be a difficult task especially in the business world. So much information is gathered from servers and personal computers regarding individuals. The same information is released to marketing firms and other interested parties such as the media for commercial purposes (Frocht & Tsai, 2003). It might sound an innocent crime, as I did not at first think it can amount to any harm. But after going through this unit I realized it is a massive insult on individual liberty and personal information to use such information without the consent of the individual for commercial benefits. I learnt that privacy is a big issue such that the United Nations universal declaration of human rights states that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with their privacy, family, home or correspondence, or to attacks upon his honour and reputation. The declaration actually states that everyone should be protected by the law against such interference or attacks. Despite all this well intended efforts, the course highlighted a different perspective on privacy of personal information; the cost of keeping information private. The perspective largely relied on the benefits of allowing access to personal information in such matters as buying using credit, which may disclose buying behaviour, subscribing to magazines and thereby letting marketers know my interests. These two activities disclose personal information, however if you consider buying using cash so as not to expose such information, it will be a costly affair and an inconvenience. Also not subscribing to magazines will come with a lot of inconvenience since you have to get the magazine by yourself and also at a higher price. I therefore think that the benefits brought about by IT far outweigh the disadvantages brought about by private information leakages. In Australia, the government is very serious on privacy issues as I learnt there is an entity (Australian federal privacy commissioner) tasked with advising on privacy matters, receiving complaints, auditing and sensitizing the public on private information. The commissioner developed ten privacy principles to guide privacy matters when handling personal information in Australia. Information security This presentation was prepared from a speech by Berin Lautenbach, security architecture leader from GE capital. Information security is very important to any organisation today especially after the growth of the Internet where hackers try every avenue possible to access organisations data. It might however be not so much of an issue for a small organisation with limited threats from rivals or even interest from hackers and cyber criminals. This presentation introduced a simplified approach towards understanding information security. I think this approach was simple to understand yet covered all the pertinent issues regarding information security. From this approach I learnt that information security involves four main functions for it to be effective. It involves; policy, risk management, controls, and people. The lecture recommended that policies be as simple to understand as possible, also it highlighted the need for security teams within an organisation to be guided by policy while looking into security matters. I agree very much with this argument since policies are connected with a company’s objectives and way of doing things. From the risk management function, I learnt that the usual way of measuring risk through the risk, vulnerability and impact approach might be subjective in some organisation thereby leading to underestimation of the risk. The presentation also talked about the various control actions such as network segmentation, firewall activation and patching. These measures require constant attention to ensure sustained security of information within an organisation. The fourth important element in securing information is the people using the system. They need a lot of awareness on how to use the system in a way that will ensure the information contained therein is secure. I think this is the most important element since it is in charge of the other four in ensuring information security. As a security expert I should help security teams understand the many internal and external threat to information that exist and help the management understand the magnitude of the risks involved so that they can make informed decision especially when it comes to policy framework, funding and proactive measures towards securing information. Use of ICT in humanitarian context The humanitarian world is a little bit different from the corporate world. The corporate world is profit oriented while the humanitarian players such as NGOs seek to improve human living conditions without profiting from the activities. In other words corporates sell products and services to make monetary profit while the likes of NGOs seek funding from donors to conduct activities that help society to solve problems. The humanitarian entities such as world vision have most of their activities concentrated in areas where human suffering is high and/or living conditions are poor. As such you will find them in most third world countries, at refugee camps and at disaster scenes. ICT is a problem solver for both the business world and the humanitarian world as I understood from the presentation by Stephen Dean. The humanitarian organizations encounter a number of challenges such as communication between their staff and also with the communities they serve. ICT comes in handy in ensuring there is appropriate infrastructure for the staff to communicate effectively. Through ICT the organizations hope to cut their expenditure as much mostly in delivery of development service to their target population. With ICT the organizations want to improve transparency on how funds are utilized to build donors trust so as to ensure a steady flow of income from donors. With ICT the organizations also target to help the communities access information, education and business opportunities so that they can be empowered enough to improve economic productivity and in extension their social and political welfare. I noticed that the humanitarian organizations mostly see ICT as a problem solver and not necessarily as a strategy tool. However I learned from Dr. Jason’s presentation that a number of advanced ICT projects have been done successfully such as Ushahidi, crisis mappers and Google Loon. The first two help in assisting search and rescue missions, while the later is an Internet provision project by Google to rural areas using high altitude balloons. References Bishop, M., & Klein, D. 1995. Improving system security via proactive password checking. 14 (3), p.233-249. Cohen, S. 2004. The nature of moral reasoning : International management ethics and values. South Melbourne : Oxford University Press. Frocht, K., & Tsai, Y. 2003. Security and network management: changes in the way we work. Information Management and Computer Security Journal , 22 (2), pp.23-45. Gudykunst, W. 2003. Cross-Cultural and Intercultural Communication . SAGE. Hackman, R. 2002. Leading Teams: Setting the stage for Great Performances. Harvard Business Press. Kimmel, A. 2009. Ethical Issues in Behavioral Research: Basic and Applied Perspectives. John Wiley & Sons. Salehnia, A. 2002. Ethical Issues of Information Systems. Idea Group Inc. Schultz, R. A. 2010. Information Technology and the Ethics of Globalization: Transnational Issues and Implications. IGI Global Snippet. Solove, D. 2011. Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security. Yale University Press. Tittle, P. 2000. Ethical Issues in Business: Inquiries, Cases, and Readings. Broadway Press. Read More