MICT710 Report: Ethical Dimensions of Telstra's Digital Strategy

This report delves into the ethical implications of Telstra's shift towards a digital business model, initiated with the launch of Telstra Digital in 2011. It employs the Doing Ethics Technique (DET) and the ACS Code of Ethics to evaluate the ethical considerations surrounding this transformation. The analysis covers the facts, issues, affected parties, and potential solutions related to Telstra's digital strategy. Furthermore, the report explores the role of Decision Support Systems and Business Analytics in achieving a competitive advantage, while also addressing the IT governance and standards necessary for these innovations within Telstra. The goal is to provide a comprehensive ethical analysis and offer recommendations for ICT-based industries undergoing similar transformations, considering Australian laws and ethical standards. Desklib provides students access to similar solved assignments and resources.

Running head: ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
ICT Implications – Telstra’s Change in Business Process
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
Executive Summary
In the year 2011, Telstra had announced that the organization would move forward in
implementing a new strategy with the launch of Telstra Digital, lead by Gerd Schenkel of National
Australia Bank. The initial purpose of this launch was for improving the use of digital channels for
customer services. However, changes in a telecommunications based organization in Australia
should maintain ethical conduct as per Australian law suggests. This report would analyze the
ethical ICT implications for the revolutionary business strategy adapted by Telstra. At first, the
situation would be analyzed with the help of Doing Ethics Technique, which is a set of questions
leading to a feasible and ethical solution. In the next part, the entire situation would be analyzed
from the perspective of an ICT Professional, which would retrospect the situation entirely to find
out the relevance of the situation being ethical using the ACS code of Ethics.

2ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
Table of Contents
Introduction.........................................................................................................................................4
Analysis of the situation using the Doing Ethics Technique..............................................................5
What is going on?...........................................................................................................................6
What are the facts?..........................................................................................................................6
What are the issues?........................................................................................................................7
Who is affected?.............................................................................................................................8
What are the ethical issues and implications?................................................................................8
What can be done about it?.............................................................................................................9
What options are there?..................................................................................................................9
Which option is best and why?.....................................................................................................10
Analysis of the situation from the point of view of an ICT Professional using the ACS Code of
Ethics................................................................................................................................................11
Recommendation..............................................................................................................................12
Conclusion........................................................................................................................................13
Reference..........................................................................................................................................15

3ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
List of Abbreviations and assumptions made
ICT – Information and Communication Technology
ITSM – Information Technology Service Management
ITIL – Information Technology Information Library
ACS – Australia Computer Society
DET – Doing Ethics Technique

4ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
Introduction
Telstra Corporation Limited or most commonly known as Telstra, is a telecommunications
organization operating primarily in Australia. Its primary focus remains on the building and
operations of telecommunications network which promotes voice calling, mobile access, internet
access, products for pay television services and numerous other products and services. The
organization has been a contemporary to Australia Post originating as the Postmaster-General’s
Department. In the year 2011, Telstra had announced that the organization would move forward in
implementing a new strategy with the launch of Telstra Digital, lead by Gerd Schenkel of National
Australia Bank. The initial purpose of this launch was for improving the use of digital channels for
customer services. However, changes in a telecommunications based organization in Australia
should maintain ethical conduct as per Australian law suggests (Leicester 2016). This report would
analyze the ethical ICT implications for the revolutionary business strategy adapted by Telstra. At
first, the situation would be analyzed with the help of Doing Ethics Technique, which is a set of
questions leading to a feasible and ethical solution. In the next part, the entire situation would be
analyzed from the perspective of an ICT Professional, which would retrospect the situation entirely
to find out the relevance of the situation being ethical using the ACS code of Ethics. The paper
would also hold recommendations regarding the change of business process according to the case
study in any ICT based industry with regards to the ACS codes of laws and ethics. The analysis of
the situation from these different points of views would enable how the IT governance and IT
standards are to be applicable to this kind of innovation in any ICT based industry.

5ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
Analysis of the situation using the Doing Ethics Technique
Doing Ethics Technique or DET is a method for analyzing the ethical compliance of any
event or occurrence in an ICT organization. It is assumed that the DET process will help in
analyzing any occurrence in an organization, preferable and information and communication
technology based organization, with the help of a set of eight questions asked in order. The series
of questions that are asked are assumed to be sequentially analyzing the entire situation and hence
help in reaching a point where the final question in the series would preferably bring about the
inference of the entire situation.
The series of questions that are asked are in sequence are the same for every one of the
situations arising in the ICT based organization. This event in this case is the change in business
process for Telstra that would prove to be revolutionary for the organization, where the entire
business process would transform into digital. The questions asked would be sequential, such as,
 What is going on?
 What are the facts?
 What are the issues?
 Who is affected?
 What are the ethical issues and implication?
 What can be done about it?
 What options are there?
 Which is the best option and why?

6ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
It is assumed that these questions would sequentially and gradually reach a conclusion that
would present a feasible solution to the ethical implications that would arise in the business
process change for Telstra for its transformation into digital process.
Following would be the analysis of the entire situation with the help of these questions:
What is going on?
Telstra Digital is a telecommunications company that had been in the Australian market
serving telecommunications services since the time of Australia Post. Recently, during the year
2011, Telstra decided to go digital, sourcing few of the impeccably resourceful digital talents that
are available in the market (Lema-Moreta and Calvo-Manzano 2017). Telstra had revolutionized
this business transformation to implement the most robust digital teams available in the country.
The game-changing initiative was taken so as to unify the vast spread business of Telstra
Telecommunications Services into providing one unified platform of information and channel
architecture. To formulate this strategy, Telstra launched Smartphone and tablet apps. One of these
Smartphone and tablet software applications was CrowdSupport community (Iden and Eikebrokk
2015). The implementation had provided the telecommunication services into turning digital by
revolutionizing the way Telstra approaches its customers and it services. In addition, this
implementation brought about strategies that helped in minimizing the budget of the previously
adapted business strategies.
What are the facts?
The revolutionary business strategy of transforming the business of Telstra
telecommunication services completely into digital arena had changed the way by which Telstra

7ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
previously used to look forward to its business and approached its customers. The entire platform
of the business had become unified with the implementation of apps for Smartphone and tablets,
having all the customer services and products available under a single platform. The person in
charge of this implementation, Gerd Schenkel had stated that the implementation had been
revolutionary and successful; although initially it had occurred several times that the project faced
delays and setbacks during the time of its implementation (Ferguson, Thornley and Gibb 2016).
The implementation of ITSM or Information Technology Service Management and ITIL or
Information Technology Information Library framework into the business process of Telstra
enabled a more reliable and responsive IT services. The majority of the people in the organization
had voted in favor of the technological change although they are also aware of the fact that it has
difficulty in management and implementation.
What are the issues?
The issues that have been there in the implementation of the ITSM services and the ITIL
framework for making the organization of Telstra reach a digitized and unified platform had a
number of advantages added to it. The implementation had proven to be revolutionary in
transforming the way Telstra used to serve its customers. In spite of the huge success of this
implementation, there had been several major issues identified in this process. The organization
had 20 years of ITSM experience (El Yamami et al. 2017). Yet it was found that there had been
very few evidences that the organization had focused on the lack of the interface standards. It is
necessary that before implementation of ITSM services, the organization should have a clear view
about the correct ethical way of implementation of the services as per the Australian law.
However, it has been found that Telstra had failed to abide by these specifications, resulting to

8ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
issues arising in the process of implementation along the change in business process, leading to
delays in the scheduled time for the project.
Who is affected?
The effect of any issue arising during the implementation of a changed business plan in an
organization impacts almost every stakeholder related to the organization and the change in the
business process. In this case, where Telstra had been in the process of implementing a changed
and digitized form of business services in the organization, replacing the previous and traditional
way of services, the customers also were prone to be affected (Bartusevičs et al. 2017). The
implementation of ITSM and ITIL framework although had issues during the process of change for
Telstra. This would affect the stakeholders of the organization along with the customers of the
telecommunication services since any faulty implementation or delay in services would make them
suffer the condition. According to the ACS code of ethics and laws, this situation is not at all
acceptable.
What are the ethical issues and implications?
The issues and implications that had been found during the change in business process of
Telstra from being a dedicated telecommunications service to providing digital services as well
also bore effect to the stakeholders in the organization and the customers at the receiving end of
the telecommunications service. According to the ACS codes of laws for ethics, any organization
changing their business process to implement ITSM and ITIL frameworks, must maintain all the
specifications for the interface standards. This would also include the continuation of claiming
definitions from the service providers to motivate the wider range of changes within the

9ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
community of ITSM. Therefore, the organizations inability to follow the proper specification for
the implementation of the changed and digitized business process resulted in the issues it had
according to the ACS codes of conduct as per the Australian law.
What can be done about it?
Every time an organization decides to upgrade the business process, it needs to follow few
codes of conduct that are generated by the laws of ethics of the particular company. However,
Telstra had failed to abide the ACS codes of laws according to the Australian government. The
organization had 20 years of ITSM experience (Barns et al. 2017). Yet it was found that there had
been very few evidences that the organization had focused on the lack of the interface standards.
This entire event had resulted in several issues regarding the missing of deadlines and the
disruption of service level agreements amongst all the service providers. After the evaluation of the
implementation of the business process, it was found that the testing period had 111 respondents,
out of which only 45 had achieved a considerable level of integration. However, the specific
benefits that had been encountered by those successful 45 respondents had been in the areas of
reduced problem resolution times, better communication, improved reporting and clearer
governance processes. The situation could have been kept under control had the organization
maintained compliance with the proper alignment of IT service delivery.
What options are there?
In attempting to solve the problems that have aroused in the issues during the
implementation of the digital business process for the telecommunications organization called

10ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
Telstra, there have been issues regarding the implementation of the new business process. To solve
the issues, there could be a possibility, that few possible options would be available.
The outcomes of adopting good ITSM practices should include a closer alignment of IT
service delivery and the organization. This should result in greater knowledge of how the business
uses IT services and help to create the flexibility and adaptability needed to meet business,
customer and user needs (Asgari et al. 2017). There should also be improved quality of ICT
services in the areas of availability, reliability and security, plus improved resource utilization and
meaningful performance indicators.
On the other hand, best practice ITSM can be achieved by ensuring the investment of the
organization matches its strategic objective. Service providers who can do what you can’t and
define those critical hand-off points with them can also be looked about for. In addition to this, it is
important to define the deliverables to be exchanged and desired integration points must be agreed
to be documented in individual supplier contracts.
Which option is best and why?
Amongst the possible solutions for the issues that have arisen in the implementation of the
newer business process in the organization of Telstra Telecommunication services, the best one
would be following the ITSM rules as described by the ACS codes of laws and ethics ensuring that
they abide by the laws of conduct according to the organization resources and the strategic needs
required to serve the customers (Turban et al. 2017). It ensures that the strategic implementation of
the newest business process serves the entire range of customers as well as abides by the strategic
objective of the business of the organization. It is only possible that following this option provided

11ICT IMPLICATIONS – TELSTRA’S CHANGE IN BUSINESS PROCESS
by the Doing Ethics Technique or DET process, a feasible solution be achievable to implement the
new ITIL framework and ITSM process with compliance to the ACS code of laws of ethics.
Analysis of the situation from the point of view of an ICT Professional using the
ACS Code of Ethics
If the entire situation is perceived according to an ICT Professional’s perspective there are
various inconsistencies in the strategic implementation of the ITSM and ITIL framework
introduction in the existing business processes. Every time an organization decides to upgrade the
business process, it needs to follow few codes of conduct that are generated by the laws of ethics
of the particular company. However, Telstra had failed to abide the ACS codes of laws according
to the Australian government. The organization had 20 years of ITSM experience (Turban et al.
2018). Yet it was found that there had been very few evidences that the organization had focused
on the lack of the interface standards. This entire event had resulted in several issues regarding the
missing of deadlines and the disruption of service level agreements amongst all the service
providers. After the evaluation of the implementation of the business process, it was found that the
testing period had 111 respondents, out of which only 45 had achieved a considerable level of
integration. However, the specific benefits that had been encountered by those successful 45
respondents had been in the areas of reduced problem resolution times, better communication,
improved reporting and clearer governance processes. The situation could have been kept under
control had the organization maintained compliance with the proper alignment of IT service
delivery.