This document discusses ethics for IT professionals and users. It defines IT professionals as those who meet four criteria including having specialized knowledge, creative work, exercising discretion and producing intellectual outputs. Some IT roles are legally considered professionals while others are not due to licensing. The document outlines relationships IT professionals have with employers, clients, suppliers, other professionals, users and society. It discusses codes of ethics from professional organizations like ACM, AITP, IEEE-CS and PMI which aim to improve ethical decision making and enhance public trust.

1. Ethics for IT Professionals
and IT Users
Prepared By: Bhanja kishor
MCA 1st SEM

2. IT PROFESSIONALS
The US code of Federal Regulations defines a person “employed in a
professional capacity” as one who meet these four criteria:
1. One’s primary duties consists of the performance of work requiring
knowledge of an advance type in a field of science or learning
customarily acquired by a prolonged course of specialized
intellectual instruction and study or work.
2. One’s instruction, study, or work is original and creative in character in a
recognized field of artistic endeavor and the result of which depends
primarily on the invention, imagination, or talent of the employee.
3. One’s work requires the consistent exercise of discretion and
judgment in his performance.
4. One’s work is predominately intellectual and varied in character, and the
output or result cannot b standardized in relation to given period of time.

3. Are IT Workers Professionals?
• A partial list of IT specialists are classified as
“Professionals”
• Which includes programmers, system analyst,
software engineers, database administrators,
local area network (LAN) administrator, and chief
information officers (CIOS).
• From a legal perspective, IT workers are not
considered as professionals as because they are
not licensed.

4. Relationships of IT Professionals
• Relationships Between IT professionals and
Employers,
• Relationships Between IT professionals and
Clients,
• Relationships Between IT professionals and
Suppliers,
• Relationships Between IT professionals and
Other Professionals
• Relationships Between IT professionals and IT
Users and
• Relationships Between IT professionals and
Society.

5. Relationships Between IT
professionals and Employers
• An IT Professional and employer discuss and agree upon fundamentals
aspects of this relationship before the professional accepts n employment
offer.
• These fundamental aspects includes job title, general performance
expectations, specific work responsibility, dress code, salary, work hours and
company benefits.
• Few other aspects of the relationship develop over time as the need arise.
• For example- Whether the employee can leave early one day if the time is
made up on another day.
• Some aspects are also addressed by law- for example, an employee cannot
be required to do anything illegal such as falsify the results of a quality
assurance test.

6. Relationships Between IT
professionals and Employers
• Trade secrecy is an area that can cause problems
between employers and IT professionals.
• A trade secrecy is information used in a business,
generally to the public, that the company has taken
strong measures to keep it confidential.
• For eg- S/W codes, H/W designs, plans etc.
• Whistle –blowing can also create friction between IT
professional and employers.
• Whistle-blowing is an effort of by an employee to attract
attention negligent, illegal, unethical or abusive act by a
company that threatens the public interest.

7. Relationships Between IT
professionals and Clients
• In this type, each party agrees to provide
something of value to each other.
• Generally, IT professionals provides hardware,
software, or services at a certain cost and within
a given time period.
• The responsibility for decision making is shared
between client and professionals.
• IT consultants or auditors can create ethical
problems between IT professionals and clients
for their own profit.

8. Relationships Between IT
professionals and Suppliers
• Most IT professional understand that building a good
relationship with suppliers encourages the flow of useful
communication and sharing of ideas.
• IT professionals should not make unreasonable
demands.
• Threatening to replace a supplier who can’t deliver
materials on time will not help a working relationships .
• Suppliers also strive to maintain positive relationships
with their customers to make and increase sales.

9. Relationships Between IT
professionals and Suppliers
• Sometimes, suppliers offer an IT professionals a
gift that is actually intended as a bribe.
• The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)
makes it a crime to a foreign officals.
• This act applies to any U.S. citizen or company,
or to any company with shared listed on any U.S.
stock exchange.
• However, a bribe is not a crime if the payment
was lawful under the law of foreign country in
which it was paid.

10. Relationships Between IT
professionals and Other
Professionals
• Professionals feel a degree of loyality to other
professionals and they help each others.
• Experienced Professionals can acts as mentors
and help develop new members of the
profession.
• Resume inflation can cause ethical problems
between professionals .
• It involves lying on a resume and claiming
competence in an IT skill.

11. Relationships Between IT
professionals and IT Users
• IT Professionals develop, install, service
and support the product for IT Users.
• IT Users need the product to deliver
organizational benefits.
• IT professionals established an
environment that supports ethical
behavior by users.
• Such environment discourages software
piracy and inappropriate use of resources.

12. Relationships Between IT
professionals and Society
• Society not only expects professionals not to
cause harm, but to provide significant
benefits.
• IT professionals have a relationship with
others in society who may be affected by
their action.
• However no formal organization that takes
responsibility for establishing and
maintaining standards that protect the public.

13. Professional Codes of Ethics
• A Professional code of ethics states the
principles and core values that are
essential to the work of a organizational
group.
• It governs their behavior.
• For example- Doctors takes 2000-year-old
Hippocratic oath.

14. Professional Codes of Ethics
• These codes improves ethical decision
making.
• Promotes high standards of practice and
ethical behavior.
• Enhances trust and repect from the
general public.
• Provides an evaluation benchmark

15. Professional Organizations
• Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM)
• Association of Information Technology
Professionals (AITP)
• Computer Society of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-
CS)
• Project Management Institute (PMI)

16. Association for Computing
Machinery (ACM)
• It’s a computing society founded in 1947.
• Serves more than 80,000 professional in
more than 100 countries.
• It sponsors special-interest groups that
focus on IT issues, artificial intelligence,
programming languages, computer-
human interaction and mobile computing.
• The ACM has its own code of ethics.

17. Association of Information Technology
Professionals (AITP)
• The AITP has its roots in chicao in 1951
• A local group Machine Accountants Association
(MAA) evolved into Data Processing
Management Association in 1962.
• And finally the AITP in 1996 with 9000 members.
• It provides quality IT-related education,
information on IT issues and forums for
networking.
• Mission is to provide superior leadership and
education in IT

18. Computer Society of the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE-CS)
• One of the largest and oldest IT
Professionals associations, with more than
1,00,000 members founded in 1946.
• IT promote the exchange of information,
ideas and technology innovations.
• In 1993, IEEE-CS and the ACM formed a
joint committee for the Establishment of
software Engineering as a Profession.

19. Project Management Institute (PMI)
• Established in 1969, currently more than
1,50,000 members across 150 countries.
• It has certified more than 1,00,000 people
as project management professionals
(PMPs).
• This certification requires a person to
follow PMP code of Ethics, and pass the
PMP exam .

20. Finally
THE END