ITC 506: Ethical Issues Due to Advancement of ICT - DET Analysis

This report, submitted by a student, analyzes ethical issues arising from the advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The report focuses on a scenario where a project manager faces an ethical dilemma concerning the early delivery of a software project without proper encryption technology, as demanded by the CIA. The analysis utilizes the Doing Ethics Technique (DET) to examine the facts, issues, and implications of the situation, including the impact on privacy, ownership, and employee behavior. The report explores various ethical theories, such as Deontology, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and Social Contract theory, to evaluate the best course of action. The report concludes that a Deontological approach is most suitable, emphasizing the ethical duties and obligations of the organization towards its stakeholders, including employees, customers, and business owners. The report also suggests the need for standardized training for IT security personnel to address ethical considerations and prevent potential abuses of data and access privileges.

Name of the Student
ITC 506 | Assessment
1
Assessment 1 – Doing
Ethics TechniqueTITLE
Ethical issues due to result of
advancement of ICT
An analysis of an ethical dilemma using the
Doing Ethics Technique (DET)
SUB TITLE
NAME Name of the Student
STUDENT
ITC506 Assessment Item 1 Page 1

Name of the Student
Table of Contents
1. The Analysis........................................................................................................................................................3
2. The Reference List...........................................................................................................................................8
ITC506 Assessment Item 1 Page 2

1. The Analysis
What’s
going
on?
The Information and Communication Technology or ICT denotes the components
and infrastructure enabling modern computing. The following study analyses
different ethical issues originated due to the use and adoption of ICT at a software
company. There, the CIA demanded an early delivery of their project. However, the
project manager refused to do that for various ethical reasons that are discussed
below. Further, various solutions are proposed to deal with the problem in this
study.
In the current era, ICT or Information Technology has turned out to be an essential
component of all social and economic activities. Life has become a huge challenge
without digital technology to live and go forward. This is because everything is
controlled and governed by it. ICT is utilized to communicate, manipulate, store
data (Tavani, 2004). Thus assimilation of all of these helps to gain knowledge.
Thus retrieval of knowledge through information is the main effect of ICT in current
informed world. However, it must not be assumed that ICT has been working
effectively around organizations while people are unaware of using that.
What
are the
facts?
There are many startle facts about ICT. For instance, Australia has turned out to be
one of the largest exporters of IT and computer services in the world. Again, global
leaders like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, HP and Intel have possessed long-established
operations in that nation. Further, they are followed by various giants like Twitter,
eBay, PayPal, Linkedin, Facebook and Google. Australia is considered a leading
hub of innovative games with Jolt, Riot Games, PopCap, DemonWare, Havok, EA,
Big Fish having notable presence. The sector has been accounting for more than
fifty-billion exports from the country per year.

What are
the
issues?
Who is
affected?
The first issue is regarding privacy of whether availability of information is justified
to use. Then regarding same problem, expenses and efforts must be incurred by
managers to consider queries regarding privacy and access. Nest issue is
regarding ownership. Here expectation from employees with respect to go work for
another organization is to be determined (Qureshi, 2015). Further, section of data
resource belonging to organization is simply an element of general knowledge of
employees is affecting reason of ICT. Lastly, the lack of knowledge of employees
up to which behavior is controlled is to be determined.
First of all the people are getting affected with job loss, reduction in physical activity
and personal interaction. People get uncomfortable with prospect to evaluate moral
practices and beliefs of other people (Tavani, 2004). Organizations are getting
negative impacts because of costs, competition and security. Probably the widest
impact ICT has been incurring is on society through permitting members to have
highly increased access to data, it results in causing digital divide between those
who can access information and cannot reduce levels of education and understand
huge quantity of misleading and incorrect information (Luo & Bu, 2016). This leads
to ethical and moral problems because of nature of few materials available.

What is
the
ethical
issue?
What are
the
implicatio
ns of the
ethical
issue?
The CIA authority needs the software to be delivered about a month early. But the
project director is not willing is deliver the software as he is being suggested by the
project manager to not deliver it as they have not implied the encryption
technology. This has led to some major ethical issues (Roberts & Allen, 2015). For
instance, a project manager in an organization refuses to deliver the project on
time, and demands for more time. According to him, to secure personal data, he
needs to perform encryption within their software. The scenario is well
demonstrated through the following video from Youtube.
“Scenario 2: Program Director ignores Project Manager’s recommendation”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4LoEdnw7iA
Current organizations possess internal policies to deal with various security
breaches. However, many of them do not have particular policies in addressing the
area. Different managers who never secure systems for which they are liable,
employees cavalierly utilize data to which they never had access (Decker, Decker
& Gutmann, 2012). For instance, as seen from the above video, the project
manager is taken off from the project, due to his demand to make delay. Here the
CIO never thought about client’s security and just wanted to bring benefit for their
own business.

What can
be done
about it?
Powers of IT security personnel generally have access to knowledge and
confidential data regarding company and individual system and network. This can
be abused inadvertently and deliberately. Hence there should be standardized
requirements of training. For example, in the present story, IT personnel must start
addressing ethical side of their job (Tavani, 2011). Moreover, IT security personnel
must be actively involved to take part in every concerns regarding ICT in those
company.
What are
the
options?
Ethical theories guide to analyze and investigate. Like scientific theory, they
delivers framework to analyze moral problems internally consistent and coherent
along with systematic and comprehensive (Tavani, 2004). The various ethical
theories for the current scenario are identified below.
1. Deontology:
The Deontological philosophies have been holding people act over ethically
acceptable ways. This takes place whenever they act according to their
duties and obligations.
2. Utilitarianism:
On the other hand, denotes to the ethical theory that denotes right and
wrong. It is done by concentrating over the various outcomes. It states that
the most ethical choice creates greatest good for wider number.
3. Virtue Ethics:
Next one is virtue ethics that helps in understanding what is meant virtuous
for people. It provides the guide instead of providing particular rules to
resolve ethical dilemmas.
4. Social contract:
The next option is social contract theory dealing with valid and universally
applicable moral rules. These can be found out through seeking what rules
and regulations must be made voluntarily. In such case, this must occur
when there are no rules (Robinson, 2017).

Which
option is
best?
Why the
above
option is
the
best?
For the current concern Option. 1 Deontological approach is the best.
The above option is best because it comprises of benefits what business and
people care about. It does not necessarily consider what is good for society or
others. According to Kant, the founder of the theory intruders accessing with the
intention to kill must be shot dead though it is wrong morally. This is because it is
the duty to protect the family. This analogy has lot to do with data breaches,
hackings and other security problems, taking place in ICT. In organizations, there
are duties or obligations towards the business owners, shareholders, employees
and customers. According to some experts main aim of moral system is to
generate intended outcomes or consequences for people involved in business
(Tavani, 2011).
This is why the organization in the chosen video could exist to serve every one of
their stakeholders. Presumably benefits are derived from business. However, this
business can have obligations towards the community they serve (Silverstone,
2017). Despite that these extends to more than just doing no harm has been a
controversial topic. Obligations towards these employees, customers and owners
are at many times in tension. Every one of them cannot be given priority at the
same time. In such cases ethical and practical considerations are applied. This
extracts more damage of profit and loss of employees and customers. When
scarcity or any reverse thing takes place business implementing ICT can take
short-term benefits at the cost of long-term trust and many more.

2. The Reference List
Decker, M., Decker, M. P., & Gutmann, M. (Eds.). (2012). Robo-and informationethics:
some fundamentals (Vol. 3). LIT Verlag Münster.
Luo, Y., & Bu, J. (2016). How valuable is information and communication technology? A
study of emerging economy enterprises. Journal of World Business, 51(2), 200-211.
Qureshi, S. (2015). Are we making a better world with information and communication
technology for development (ICT4D) research? Findings from the field and theory
building.
Robinson, J. S. (2017). Beyond'Passion Versus Reason': Identifying Person and Feature
Attributes that Predict Deontological and Consequentialist Moral Judgment (Doctoral
dissertation, University of Toronto (Canada)).
Silverstone, R. (Ed.). (2017). Media, technology and everyday life in Europe: From
information to communication. Routledge.
Tavani, H. T. (2004). Genomic research and data-mining technology: Implications for
personal privacy and informed consent. Ethics and information technology, 6(1), 15-
28.
Tavani, H. T. (2006). Ethics at the intersection of computing and genomics. Ethics,
Computing, and Genomics. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 5-26.
Tavani, H. T. (2011). Can we develop artificial agents capable of making good moral
decisions?. Minds and Machines, 21(3), 465-474.
YouTube. (2018). Scenario III 2 Program Director ignores Project Manager’s recommendation.
[online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4LoEdnw7iA [Accessed 16 Mar.
2018].