Professionalism in the information and communication technology industry

381 Pages·2013·20.265 MB·English

by  John Weckert, Richard Lucas

Professionalism Information
in the

Communication Technology
and
Industry
John Weckert
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)
Charles Sturt University
Richard Lucas
Information Systems
University of Canberra

Professionalism Information
in the

Communication Technology
and
Industry
John Weckert
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE)
Charles Sturt University
Richard Lucas
Information Systems
University of Canberra
Practical Ethics and Public Policy Monograph 3
Series Editor: Michael J. Selgelid
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email: [email protected]
This title is also available online at http://epress.anu.edu.au
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Weckert, John.

Title: Professionalism in the information and communication technology industry /
John Weckert, Richard Lucas.

ISBN: 9781922144430 (pbk.) 9781922144447 (ebook)

Notes: Includes bibliographical references.

Subjects: Information technology--Employees--Professional ethics.
Telecommunication--Employees--Professional ethics.
Employees--Attitudes.

Other Authors/Contributors: Lucas, Richard.

Dewey Number: 174.93034833
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
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without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design and layout by ANU E Press
Printed by Griffin Press
This edition © 2013 ANU E Press
Contents
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Section I. Regulating technology
On the need for professionalism in the ICT industry . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1 . The fundamental problem of regulating technology . . . . . . . . 11
Michael Kirby
Section II. Practitioners’ perspectives
An initiation into ICT professionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2 . The maturing of a profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
John Ridge
3 . Some ethical imperatives for the computing profession . . . . . 49
Neville Holmes
4 . The uncertainty of ethics in IT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Mark Haughey
Section III. Professionalism
Professions, professionals, and professionalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
5 . What is an ICT professional anyway? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Clive Boughton
6 . ICT is not a profession: So what? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
John Weckert and Douglas Adeney
7 . Being a good computer professional: The advantages of
virtue ethics in computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Richard Volkman
8 . Informed consent in information technology:
Improving end user licence agreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Catherine Flick
v
Section IV. ICT governance
What is good governance? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
9 . Virtuous IT governance: IT governors can't be virtuous! . . . . 161
Richard Lucas
10 . The decision disconnect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Cecilia Ridgley
Section V. Ethics education
The place of ethics in ICT courses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
11 . Educating for professionalism in ICT:
Is learning ethics professional development? . . . . . . . . . . . 211
David Lindley, Brenda Aynsley, Michael Driver, Robert Godfrey,
Robert Hart, Glen Heinrich, Bhuvan Unhelkar and Kim Wilkinson
12 . Experiential ethics education for IT professionals . . . . . . . . 233
Ian Stoodley, Christine Bruce and Sylvia Edwards
Section VI. Codes of ethics
Are codes of ethics useful? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
13 . ICT governance and what to do about the toothless tiger(s):
Professional organisations and codes of ethics . . . . . . . . . . 267
Don Gotterbarn
14. Business benefits from keeping codes of ethics up to date . . . 295
Michael Bowern and Oliver K Burmeister
Section VII. ICT and society
Ethics first or ethics last? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
15 . Ethical issues of emerging ICT applications — a Euro-landscape . . 321
Bernd Carsten Stahl and Simon Rogerson
16 . Ethical issue determination, normativity and contextual blindness:
Epistemological studies of the limits of formalism in ethics
and their consequences for the theory of governance . . . . . . . . 343
Philippe Goujon and Catherine Flick
vi
Acknowledgements
Many of the papers in this volume were presented at a workshop that was part of
an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project (LP0560659), and the rest
were solicited from other leading researchers in the field. We wish to thank the
ARC and the Australian Computer Society (ACS) for their support for the initial
project. We would particularly like to thank the participants in the project,
John Ridge, past president of the ACS and Chairman of the ACS Foundation,
Professor Jeroen van den Hoven of Delft Technical University and Dr Jeremy
Moss of the University of Melbourne. We especially thank Dr Yeslam Al-Saggaf
of Charles Sturt University, who played a major role in interviews and analysis
in the early part of the project.
vii

Introduction
Professionalism: It's NOT the job you DO, it's HOW you DO the job (anonymous)
Professionalism, in the sense described in the quotation above, is arguably more
important in some occupations than others. It is vital in some because of the life
and death decisions that must be made, for example, in medicine. In others, the
rapidly changing nature of the occupation makes efficient regulation difficult and
so the professional behaviour of the practitioners is central to the functioning of
that occupation. The central idea behind this book is that this process of rapid
change is relevant to information and communications technology (ICT). The
technology changes so quickly that regulation will always lag behind.
The contributors to this volume come from a variety of backgrounds, and this
range of contributions is intentional. It is not just academics who have important
things to say about professionalism in ICT. Some contributors are or were ICT
practitioners, one is a retired judge from the High Court of Australia, some are
ICT academics and others are philosophers. Underlying all chapters, except
the first, however, is the concept of ICT professionalism. The first chapter,
by the Hon Michael Kirby, focuses on regulation. What it does, by showing
the difficulties in regulating new technologies — and ICT in particular — is
highlight the importance of professionalism in ICT. If regulation is difficult,
the behaviour of professionals is paramount. The rest of the sections all contain
chapters that approach aspects of professionalism from different perspectives.
The second section contains reflections on professionalism and ethics by
experienced ICT practitioners and the third focuses on professionalism itself.
The fourth considers ICT governance and its relation to professionalism. Section
five contains two discussions of ethics education, something considered by the
Australian Computer Society (ACS) as a necessary component of education for
ICT professionals. Codes of ethics are a common component of a professional’s
armoury and these are discussed in Section Six. Finally, in Section Seven, ethical
concerns about ICT in society more generally are considered, together with the
role that professionals have in this context.
These sections, considered as a whole, present a richer picture of what an ICT
professional is or ought to be. In fact, the overall argument of the book is that,
given the problems of regulation, if the ICT industry is to make its proper
contribution to society, those in the ICT industry must be professionals in the
sense of behaving professionally.
Each section of the book contains an introductory piece by the editors
outlining not only the chapters, but more importantly, setting the scene
1