IT Professional Responsibility

  By Raul Bernardino

The Information Communication and Technology (ICT) professional has specialized themselves in the knowledge therefore they are often getting a respect and authority within the society.  Nowadays, the computing professionals have to play the major roles and which have significant impacts in today’s world and people lives.

The computing professionals have found their own pictures in several of the relationships in the professional and shown with another people [Johnson, 1994]; which are following: a relationship between the employer with its employees, clients with professionals, professionals with professionals, and society with professionals. This relationship involves the various interests, and often those interests could become a conflict to one another. Therefore computing professional should be aware that there would be a potential of conflict of the interest and therefore the computing professionals have to try in avoiding the conflicts.

In the country like Unites State, professional organization such as the ACM which is stand for “Association for- Computing-Machinery” and the IEEE which is stand for “Institute of Electrical and Electronic-Engineers” in which worked out the codes of the -ethics, guidelines of the curriculums, and -accreditation. These necessities are to help the professionals in the computing to have more understandable and able to manage the essence of ethical-responsibilities. E.g., in the 1991 a Joint Task Force for ACM and IEEE curriculums are approved a set of guidelines which is calling “Curriculum-1991” for computing science program in the college.

In my opinion computing professionals obligations are similar to any technical professional’s obligations, like architects, designers. Putting those all obligation of the professionals together is called ethics of profession.

These ethical-obligations have been reviewed by many -philosophers and have been expressed by many believers’ or religion-leaders over centuries. Therefore human being has to be honestly, kindly, respectfully, and trusted.

As human being we have to responsible of our own acts. E.g. the responsibilities of professionals in the computing are firmly to protect the society from the any threat of information revolution which had displayed over the internet. For instance it’s protecting children from the irresponsible sites over the internet. In other hand, as a human being is also responsible to protect the children or disable from any hazard or risk in the earth. 
As an IT professional who works for an institution like Autoridade National do Petroleo, I have to follow the objectives, mission, and goals of the institution during the implementation of information and technology which should in-line with the business needs.

References:

·Adams, A.A. & McCrindle, R.J. (2008) Pandora’s box: Social and professional issues of the information age. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

·Terrell Bynum (2008) Computer and Information Ethics [Online] Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-computer/#ProRes (Accessed Date: January 8, 2011)

• Ethics and Professional Responsibility in Computing [Online] Available from: https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/12247/ecse909.pdf?s quence=2 (Accessed Date: January 8, 2011)