For example, an IT user is a person for whom a hardware or software product is designed. It is the IT professional’s duty to deliver products and services that best meet the users’ needs. Regulatory laws may not be sufficient enough to safeguard against all negative side effects of a particular product. IT professionals have a responsibility to take action to eliminate potential public risk. This is where professional organizational ethical standards come into the picture. IT professionals who are members of these different societies hold to a higher standard above established laws.
Corporations themselves should also be aware of ethical issues and be prepared for potential situations. Corporate ethics can be defined to include ethical conduct, legal compliance and corporate social responsibility. In order to handle ethical situations, corporations should have an ethics policy that includes standards, awareness, and internal reporting.
Even if laws are applicable, organizations, professionals and corporations themselves should establish and abide by ethical modes of conduct. Consistent, applicable ethical standards.
Reference: Reynolds, G. (2003). Ethics in information technology. Thomson Course Technology: Boston.
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Week 2 - Answer to Question 2
"What can IT professionals do to ensure that the projects they lead meet the client's expectations and do not lead to charges of fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, and breach of contract?"
Meetings with minutes need to be held with the client. The decisions made at the meetings need to be fed back to the client for confirmation. These decisions should represent the needs the client articulated and the possibilities promised by the IT professional. Regular meetings of this format will ensure the client’s expectations are met. These meetings will also provide an opportunity for revisions, as IT professional may encounter unexpected problems that may require changes in the project. Changes should be made with the knowledge and approval of the client. It is also necessary to have legal representation to overlook signing of contracts. Both sides should be advised of any problematic part of the contract that may cause later charges of fraud or misrepresentation. Once the legal minds have cleared the wording of the contract, both sides should be assured that the contract is an above-board document. The document should represent the needs of the client as well as the commitment of the IT professional. This will prevent accusations at a later date.
Response to Week 2, Topic 1
“Laws do not provide a complete guide to ethical behavior. An activity can be legal but not ethical.”
Put simply, laws are designed to protect society against the behavior of bad guys. The potential for bad guys to cause harm requires us to codify the standards for societal behavior and apply punitive consequences for violating those behavioral standards. Laws are what “looks out” for the general population.
A specific organization within society, however, may place additional requirements for the behavior of its members. Violating those additional requirements may not be “illegal,” but they have been judged to be “unacceptable” for that particular organization. For example, sending your friends unsolicited e-mail messages containing sexually explicit material may be perfectly legal, but an organization may exclude the use of its e-mail system for that purpose. Ethics are organization-specific rules that govern the behavior of its members beyond that of criminal activities.
Response to Rick – Week 2
I agree with Rick. While laws are necessary, they tend to address issues associated with crime, its prevention and punishment. Unacceptable behavior which falls more in line with ethics is most times not addressed by laws and sometimes left to institutions like churches, schools and organization to enforce in their bodies. These ethical standards or codes of conduct step beyond criminal activity to address unacceptable behavior and should make for a more pleasant environment in which to live and work. One might even venture to say that ethical standards can address questionable legal activities.
Response to Avril, Week 2
To ensure transparency and avoid problems related to fraud, I agree that you need legal minds to look over the contracts. In government projects that I've worked, we've actually had a third party help to mediate the terms of the contract and also ensure that the contract was being fulfilled. They were hired to ensure that the IT developers were not defrauding us, but at the same time they ensured that we (the client) were not continually "moving the goal posts."
Week 2 – Response to Question 2 – “What can IT professionals do to ensure that the projects they lead meet the client’s expectations and do not lead to charges of fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, and breach of contract?”
One of the most important ways to begin a project is to define the deliverables expected by the client. The client in an educational institution is any constituent requesting the technology service, application, or initiative of any kind. By defining the expectations in a clear and concise manner, laying out what the client will get and how it will look, clarifies the entire project from the start. This practice can, therefore, prevent all those elements mentioned including fraud, misrepresentation, and breach of contract. Another way to prevent these unfortunate situations is to clearly define a timeline and required resources along with deliverables. This practice gives the client a realistic overview of the time needed to complete a project. It also ensures the project manager has thoroughly analyzed the resources needed for each task required. By analyzing resources required, possible deficits are identified in the beginning of discussions. Lastly, a clearly defined process for managing change orders should be agreed upon. Every technology project inevitably has some form of change request or addition. While the definition of deliverables minimizes the need for change orders, it cannot possibly eliminate them. Having a process in place to identify, clarify, and integrate changes in to the overall process makes this unavoidable instance painless.
Week 2 – Response to Avril
Avril’s suggestion to have legal counsel review contracts is an excellent point. My own institution is working through a disagreement with a vendor, that could have been prevented altogether if the legalities of our relationship were defined early on. Unfortunately this did not happen, and the relationship is now strained. Institutions that embark upon revenue generating activities, such as providing consulting services or application development, can work to develop boilerplate contracts that can easily be utilized from contract to contract.
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