Ethical Issues in IT Resolving an Ethical Dilemma

Question: Discuss about theEthical Issues in ITfor Resolving an Ethical Dilemma. Answer: Introduction This case study is about the ethical issues in a website that contains the links of some news channels which displays some news that are not allowed by the government. Now the fact is that, the I.T. manager Sarah was unaware about the fact as it was developed by the web developer of a state government department, Yan. The ethical dilemma of this situation has been analyzed in this paper through the use of Thomas Whites framework for solving ethical dilemma. This is an efficient one for solving the problem related to ethics and the questions is What to do? (White 2005). The analysis has three simple steps as discussed in the section below: Step 1: Consequences Analysis In this case, the consequence is that the website links causes lots of embarrassments to the government of Australia due to the website links. The links were ok until it shows any cases that has suppression order. Both the developer and the IT manager have shown lack of professionalism in this case. As per the ACS code of ethics, the IT professionals should maintain professionalism while working in their workplaces. In this case, Yan required to well aware about the links before adding those to the WebPages (acs.org 2016). On the other hand, Sarah had the responsibly to check each and every links of the site before permitting the live streaming of the site in the internet. Step 2: Analysis of the Actions In order to analyse the actions, the ACS code of ethics has been considered. It helped to understand the actual problems of the It professionals involved in this case issue. The incident has also violated the issues of public interest of the ACS code of ethics. The website links of the global channels are not permitted to be shown in the local sites of Australia but the website links enabled it publicly. The integrity factors associated with the development of the website were not considered by the developer and so by the IT manager. Another violation of the ACS code of ethics is the competence violation. As per the ethical consideration, the professional works of the IT professionals should competently and diligently for the stakeholders. In this case, the developed website was the cause of great embarrassment of the stakeholders. Step 3: Decision Making Sarah and Yan both are responsible for this ethical dilemma. Now they should maintain the honesty at the workplace as per the ACS code (acs.org 2016). Both of them should take the responsibility and should admit their negligence to the stakeholders. The contradictory news links should be urgently removed from the pages of the government website. This necessary improvements need to be done by Yan in urgent basis. Yan need to remove those links and add new links after knowing well about the links. Before permitting the live streaming now Sarah need to check all the components of the revised websites. References: acs.org. 2016.ACS Code of Ethics. [online] Available at: https://www.acs.org.au/content/dam/acs/acs-documents/ACS%20Code-of-Professional-Conduct_v2.1.pdf [Accessed 20 Nov. 2016]. White, T.I., 2005. Resolving an ethical dilemma.Loyola Marymount University.