Addressing Professional Issues in Information Technology: A Report

This report delves into the multifaceted professional issues confronting IT professionals, encompassing social, ethical, and legal dimensions. It underscores the importance of addressing these issues to uphold organizational reputation and make informed moral decisions within the IT domain. The report examines critical social issues such as the adoption of environmentally friendly solutions in IT, considering factors like power consumption, e-waste recycling, and carbon footprint reduction. It also addresses workplace diversity, including generational differences and fostering inclusivity. Ethical concerns, including cybercrime, data security, and privacy violations, are thoroughly discussed, along with the need for ethical guidelines. Legal aspects, particularly regarding intellectual property rights and data protection, are also explored. The report emphasizes the need for IT professionals to stay updated on current regulations and laws, and the importance of ethical conduct to foster a healthy work environment.

Running body: PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
PROFESSIONAL ISSUES
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Author Note

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While conducting their profession, IT professionals need to address certain issues
while providing IT solutions that support the best priorities of their organization. In an
organization, an IT professional plays an integral role in managing the social, ethical as well
as legal issues that has the potential to damage the reputation of the organization.
Understanding these issues will allow the IT professional to make reasonable moral decisions
inside the social and legal frameworks of the IT domain (Stair and Reynolds 2013). The
legal, ethical and social issues will help the professional to recognize and critically assess the
problem and employ social, legal and moral dimensions to his actions for curving the issues
effectively.
Every IT professional needs to take into account the social issues that he or she will
be facing while conducting his or her profession. An important social issue that is faced by
the professionals is related to adopting environmentally friendly solutions in Information
Technology. As the demand for products increases, the resources of the earth are getting
exhausted with every consecutive year. To cover the entire green IT spectrum, the IT
professionals should understand that power consumption is not the only issue that he or she
should consider. The professionals should consider recycling harmful E-wastes, distributing
workload by virtualising and optimising servers and running an efficient business continuity
model (Krass, Nedorezov and Ovchinnikov 2013). The professionals should also consider
reducing the overall carbon footprint of the organisation by using paperless desks and saving
electricity whenever possible. A long term green policy should be defined in the organization
to mitigate the social issues that the IT sector faces on a periodic basis.
The different types of generations in the workplace is another social issue that needs
to be addressed in the IT work environment. The new generation 2020 is a new concern for
IT companies as five consecutive generations will be present in the work environment at the
same time. The issues can range from how the different generations collaborate with one

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another and how they will be connected and concerned about each other. Issues related to
collaboration and communication should be taken into account by the professionals and how
they can work effectively to become part of a team. The IT professional needs to foster
equality among all the members and inspire females to stand up and become part of the IT
revolution (which is mostly dominated by males). People with disabilities should be assisted
and people should be encouraged to become influential leaders (Holtshouse 2013). As the IT
organizations are becoming a global platform, communication skills will play an integral part
in the future. These social issues need to be considered to change the way how professionals
conduct their work in an IT sector.
There are several other ethical issues that an IT professional needs to consider while
doing their job. Cyber-crime is a new issue that is faced by IT organizations all over the
world. With the growing number of cybercrimes, the IT professional should focus on
working towards providing convenient security measures for the organization and work with
risk management firms closely. Security concern is an ethical issue that is related to an IT
professional. The professionals often have access to a huge number of confidential data that
should be prevented from abuse either inadvertently or deliberately (Floridi and Taddeo
2014). Other ethical issues are related to privacy. Reading private emails of workers in the
name of security, monitoring website data, placing key loggers in machines, reading personal
documents that are stored in user’s computers and accessing personal information without the
approval from the user are some of the ethical concerns that are faced by an IT professional.
As the IT professionals (for example, network administrator) has access to most of the
network system in an organization, he or she needs to consider whether monitoring personal
information is a part of the job description or whether it violates the user’s personal ethical
beliefs (Floridi 2013). Other ethical issues involves manipulating data to take more money or
promising more than one can offer. Installing new cyber security measures can make the

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network of the client more secure but no professional can guarantee a completely secure
alternative. Professionals have to address other scenarios such as replacing the current
security measures with the firewalls of a different manufacturer and charging the client more
money for the installed technology. Unlike other older professions such as law and medicine,
information technology lacks a standard body which can overlook the ethical issues and
establish a detailed ethics code (Quinn 2014). The IT professional can look up to ACM (or
Associations for Computing Machinery) which has developed their own ethical conduct as a
guideline for addressing the discussed ethical issues.
To minimize risks from physical and electronic threats and reduce losses from the
legal cases, IT professionals need to be familiar with the current legal environment and
should stay updated with the regulations and laws. Legal issues related to ownership of
intellectual property are very common in an IT landscape (Lloyd 2017). If an IT professional
makes a software during his employment, the legal right of the software belongs to the
employer and if the professional works as a contractor, then the rights of the product belongs
with the individual himself. Using unauthorised data or modifying data content is forbidden
in many organizations and can be considered under legal issues if the victim decides to take
the matter to the court citing the Data Protection Law. Copyright violations, using data for
unlawful and personal gain purposes, sending of abusive messages and wrongful
discrimination of individuals are all susceptible to legal issues and should be carefully
considered by the IT professional while conducting his profession (Taylor, Fritsch and
Liederbach 2014).
The IT professionals need to consider all the professional issues that are related to the
IT domain n to understand what type of action is suitable for addressing these issues. Privacy
of data and consent of the individuals are important considerations that should be addressed
by the professionals carefully. It is the moral duty of the professionals to deal with these

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issues in the best way possible. The ethical and legal issues can be prevented by following a
standardized guideline by all the IT organizations and with proper understanding of the
concerns, the IT professional can foster a healthy work environment while performing his
duties.
References
Floridi, L. and Taddeo, M. eds., 2014. The ethics of information warfare (Vol. 14). Springer
Science & Business Media.
Floridi, L., 2013. The ethics of information. Oxford University Press.
Holtshouse, D.K., 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer
Science & Business Media.
Krass, D., Nedorezov, T. and Ovchinnikov, A., 2013. Environmental taxes and the choice of
green technology. Production and operations management, 22(5), pp.1035-1055.
Lloyd, I., 2017. Information technology law. Oxford University Press.
Quinn, M.J., 2014. Ethics for the information age. Boston, MA: Pearson.
Stair, R. and Reynolds, G., 2013. Principles of information systems. Cengage Learning.
Taylor, R.W., Fritsch, E.J. and Liederbach, J., 2014. Digital crime and digital terrorism.
Prentice Hall Press.