Professional Issues: Ethical, Social, and Legal Aspects of IT

This report addresses several key professional issues relevant to the IT field. It begins by examining ethical dilemmas, specifically focusing on informed consent within the context of usability testing and referencing the ACS Code of Ethics. The report then analyzes Kevin Rudd's speech, highlighting the use of linguistic devices to convey emotion and advance an argument. Furthermore, the report delves into personal experiences with procrastination, exploring its causes and effects, as well as strategies for overcoming it. Finally, the report provides a detailed discussion on time management, including the importance of creating to-do lists, setting personal goals, and prioritizing tasks to improve productivity and reduce stress. The report references relevant academic sources throughout its analysis.

Professional Issues of IT
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Abstract—The purpose of this assignment is to identify potential social, legal, and ethical issues resulting from ICT
developments. This report highlights on those issues and explains solutions adopted to achieve and maintain
ethical standards and social benefits gained from the solutions. Further, section two of the assignment looks at
the linguistic devices that can be used by a speaker to advance an argument with emotions. Section three reviews
procrastination and giver personal experiences. Finally, the topic of time management is addressed in detail.
Keywords-ICT, Ethical Issues, Social Issues, Legal Issues, Code of Conduct, Informed Consent
I. DISCUSSION QUESTION ONE: INFORMED CONSENT
An essential characteristic of ICT profession is the requirement that its members should follow a code of ethics.
The Code lists a set of ethical values and some requirements for the fields. As such, every member required to abide
by the listed values and act with integrity during their dealings. In case one discussed in this assignment, an employer
has included both internal and external participants to perform a usability test on the site. The issue highlighted in
this scenario involves the issuance of the consent forms to the internal employees. Sometimes, the firm might argue
that internal participants should automatically get involved in the process even without the form since they have
signed employment contracts with the employer.
However, it is ethical for the firm to give the internal participants the right to make a choice to leave the usability
testing. ACS values emphasize on the primacy of the public interest. According to the first ACS value, the firm or an IT
professional such as the usability testing members should place the interests of the public above the organization’s
interest [1]. In other words, the employee should be given a right to either accept or decline from participating in the
study. Further, the second value requires a firm to put effort to enhance the quality of life of the people affected by
the work. In effect, if an employee feels threatened by participating in the study, they should be able to choose to
quit or continue.
Therefore, in this case involving the issuance of forms of consent to internal workers, the conflict should be
resolved in favor of the employees (public interest) and not of the organization. The people responsible for the
usability test should identify the stakeholders that are impacted by the activity, and explicitly identify their concerns

and interest. Next, the firm should openly advise the concerned parties about any conscientious objections presented
by the situation.
According to researchers, informed consent is a legal and ethical requirement for studies involving human
participants [2]. Internal employees are entitled to receive the forms since they are still part of human participants.
They should be informed of all the aspects of the usability test. As such, they should voluntarily confirm their
willingness to participate without being bound by their employment contracts.
II. CASE STUDY 2: KEVIN RUDD AND THE LANGUAGE GAME
Kevin Rudd addressed the Australian citizens about the blemished act of the government in the country’s history.
It was a rare act by a prime minister to open the federal parliament with the ‘sorry’ word that Islander and Aboriginal
people longed to hear [3]. The purpose of this speech was to inform the audience that the government was
committed to offering equal opportunities for every person in the country without considering their origin [4]. As
such, the speaker used emotive lexical choice and phonetic features to create a formal and cohesive speech [5].
The Prime Minister used phonetic features such as the prosodic elements and emphatic stress while addressing
the Parliament. He stated that his government was committed to harnessing the determination of “all Australians” to
improve the country’s critical matters such as life expectancy and economic growth. The emphasis of the phrase “all
Australians” in his speech creates a sense of belonging to all citizens including the indigenous cultures. The speech
also involved repetition when Rudd lists a set of apologies using the phrases “we apologize for” and “we say sorry”
[4]. Such repetition reinstates the speaker’s contention to the listeners to ensure that the speech remains persuasive
[5].
Kevin Rudd uses emotive language to address the audience [6]. The lexical choice persuades the audience and
gives them an impression that the Prime Minister and his government are aware of the problems caused by this
regrettable historical event. For instance, in the speech, Rudd apologizes for the “pain and suffering and hurt caused
on stolen generations” [4]. He correctly used these words to generate an emotive feel in his talk to show that he is
addressing a delicate topic. The lexical choice gives Rudd a chance to convince the hurting audience and to drive his
agenda that the government will focus on improving on its wrongdoings.
Apparently, the Prime Minister was able to push his contention to the audience through effective persuasion that
involved a combination of repetition to continuously re-establish the government remorse and intention to make
right decisions in the future, emphatic stress to express that he was sorry for the mistake, and emotive language and
lexical choice to persuade the audience even more.

III. PROCRASTINATION
Sometimes I keep postponing things until the last minute mainly because I feel lazy or less motivated to do them. I
find myself doing more pleasurable tasks at the expense of the impending ones. Unfortunately, this act has at times
caused some unpleasant response because of the delay.
Firstly, I have avoided unpleasant tasks due to lack of motivation [7]. For instance, I lack the motivation to empty
the dust bin or rake leaves outside. However, such activities should come first then the motivation later. Interestingly,
I have discovered that in some activities, the real motivator is starting the ‘unpleasant’ task. In effect, I always strive
to take the first step to induce me to handle a bigger action to avoid procrastination that would rather waste more
time when that activity is delayed.
Secondly, lack of knowledge and skills to handle a task forces me to postpone. Previously, I have avoided handling
school projects due to lack of skills to complete them. However, I discovered that the best way to overcome this
weakness involves establishing my weaknesses and seeking ways to improve and correct them.
In other cases, I tend to procrastinate boring tasks. I have postponed completing assignments in certain courses
that I feel are boring. If I my interests are not stimulated by the content I am studying, I end up delaying delivering the
tasks [8]. However, I try to overcome this weakness by just doing it. I attend the class and put effort to complete the
assignments.
Ultimately, procrastination causes more harm than good [7]. The effects of postponing tasks and last minute rush
have made me feel a sense of guilt, severe loss of productivity, stress, and failure to meet my responsibilities. As such,
my focus has been to eliminate procrastination from my everyday activities. My aim is to raise myself above attempts
and reasons that justify procrastination to avoid negative consequences.
IV. TIME MANAGEMENT
Description
Week 1-3 Learning
Describe The greatest problem I deal with is on time management. I always feel overloaded and busy. I
work late and wake up very early to meet deadlines. I have crisis after failing to deliver tasks on
time. I also procrastinate other activities trying to deliver others that I presume to be urgent
and more important. At the end, I experience stress and feel like I am being less productive.
However, I discovered that I never create a to-do list. Further, I rarely set targets and personal
goals to assess my effort against the outcomes. Lack of a list and goals also results in a lack of
priorities on what I do [9]. In effect, it becomes hard to distinguish between rewarding
activities and distractions [10].
Explore I have discovered that managing time effectively can help improve my productivity and reduce

stress levels. I can improve my career by devoting time to high-reward activities. On the other
hand, poor planning results in time wastage, low productivity, procrastination, and increased
levels of stress.
Evaluate I realized that I can use a list of tasks to prioritize them and indicate the ones that are complete
or pending. Secondly, setting personal goals creates a vision and a destination for the work I
do. Having a goal helps me manage my time, resources, and priorities to ensure I achieve the
objectives. Goals also outline the activities that are more rewarding and need more time and
devotion. Since I discovered that I deal with a flood of urgent tasks, I have mastered the skill of
prioritizing them to manage the limited time resource. It is easy to analyze and evaluate my
improvement after setting goals, developing a to-do list, and prioritizing tasks. For instance, at
the end of the day, I can review the list to assess the tasks delivered and the ones pending.
Furthermore, I can assess my personal goals to determine if I achieved them or not. From the
results, I can devise other mechanisms to improve on the shortcomings.
Plan I have discovered that an effective way to improve productivity and minimize stress is to
assess, determine, and rectify my time management faults. It is mandatory to develop a list of
prioritized activities to limit the number of resources wasted on non-essential distraction and
focus on sensitive and rewarding tasks [10]. Further, I will set personal goals that will be used
as an evaluation tool to assess if my efforts are being rewarded and to determine other
approaches that can improve my productivity.

REFERENCES
[1] ACS Code of Professional Conduct. Professional Standards Board, Australian Computer Society, vol. V2.1, April
2014.
[2] L. P. Nijhawan, et al., “Informed consent: Issues and challenges,” Journal of Advanced Pharmaceutical
Technology and Research, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 134-140, Sep 2013.
[3] S. Grant, “Reflections on the Apology: Kevin Rudd in Conversation with Stan Grant,” The Guardian, Feb 2016.
[4] K. Rudd, “Apology to Australia’s indigenous peoples,” Speech delivered in Australian Parliament, Feb 2008.
[5] N. Kemertelidze, & T. Manjavidze, “Stylistic repetition, its peculiarities, and types in modern English,” European
Scientific Journal, specil edition, July 2013.
[6] M. Selting, “Emphatic speech style mdash; with special focus on the prosodic signaling of heightened emotive
involvement in conversation,” Journal of Pragmatics, vol. 22, no. 3-4, pp. 375-408, Oct 1994.
[7] N. Thakkar, “Why procrastinate: An investigation of the root causes behind procrastination,” Lethbridge
Undergraduate Research Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, 2009.
[8] N. K. Abu, & D. G. Saral, “The reasons of academic procrastination tendencies of education faculty students,”
The Online Journal of New Horizons in Education, vol. 6, no. 1, Jan 2016.
[9] S. W. Chapman, & M. Rupured, “Time management: 10 Strategies for better time management,” The University
of Georgia Cooperative Extension.
[10] D. Jo-Ana, et al., “Time management strategies for research productivity,” Western Journal of Nursing Research,
vol. 35, no. 2, pp. 155-176, 2013.