Ethical and social issues in information system

Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems

Understanding Ethical and Social Issue Related to System

When a person acts as a pre-moral agent, ethics refers to the principle of right and wrong that they utilize to guide their decision-making. Because they offer the potential for significant social change and endanger the current distribution of authority, wealth, rights, and obligations, the IS raise new ethical questions for both individuals and societies.

• Like the telephone, radio, and internet, technology can be utilized to advance society, but it can also be used to undermine societal norms.
• IT progress will lead to moral dilemmas.
• With the growth of the internet and e-commerce, ethical issues in an IS have been addressed. Information gathering, integration, and distribution are made simpler by the Internet and digital company technologies. On the other side, there is a debate over how to safeguard intellectual property, personal privacy, and security.
• It is important to consider the morally and socially responsible path of action when using information systems.

Information Age Moral Dimensions

New ethical, social, and political challenges are generated by the introduction of new IT and must be addressed at the individual, societal, and political levels. The information age's five moral aspects are as follows:

• Rights and Obligations of Information
  • What exactly are people's and companies' rights when it comes to their own information? What are the legal safeguards in place? And those obligations are for that information, according to the rules. These rights consist of:
  • It is believed that everyone has the right to privacy and quiet.
  • Technology and information systems threaten people's privacy in order to carry out a low-cost, successful takeover.
  • A system of laws or regulations that accurately specify how we serve information about persons and that make call mechanisms available are necessary for the existence of due process.
• Property Rights
  • How might the conventional notions of intellectual property rights and patents be altered in the age of digital technology? What are these rights, and how may they be protected? Due to how easy it is to replicate computer information networks, information technology has made it more difficult to secure property. Within the three patents, there are numerous protections for intellectual property:
    • Trade Secrets
      • Any creative effort that is utilized for commercial purposes may be categorized as a trade secret.
    • Copyright
      • For a period of 28 years, creators of intellectual property are protected by law from being copied by others for any purpose.
    • Patents
      • A patent grants the holder a 17-year exclusive monopoly over the ideas behind an invention.
• Responsibility and Control
  • Who is in charge of policing how information obtained from the public is used and abused. In order to hold people and institutions accountable for their acts, new information technologies are questioning the validity of existing laws governing liability and social customs. Accountability is the process for determining who is responsible for the decisions made and the actions taken. The accountability is in charge of system control, system quality, and quality of life issues.
• Quality Systems
  • What data requirements should information processing systems have in order to ensure the protection of society and individual rights? If it is their responsibility to notice and make corrections, it can hold people and organizations accountable for predictable and avoidable consequences. All programmers strive to keep data and systems accurate. Each vendor should have the freedom to choose the quality system they will employ. The best system is one that is devoid of errors, inexpensive, and maintainable. In some circumstances, the working system needs to be secure and private so as to prevent organizational indiscipline.
• Quality of Life
  • The system's quality will keep living at a high standard. All knowledge has its own rules and values, which are crucial to life quality. This will assist in providing answers to many questions, including What principles must to be upheld and safeguarded in a society that relies on knowledge and information? What institutions are to be protected, and what institutions should be protected? Along with the power of technology, the negative social costs of the introduction of information technologies and systems are growing. While offering benefits, computers and information technology can also destroy important aspects of culture and civilization.

Key Technology Trend That Raises Ethical Issues

• Computing Power Doubles Every 18 Months
  • (System efficiency doubles system error, and who is accountable for such errors/ethical problems triples). The majority of organizations are now able to employ IS for their primary production processes because to the doubling of computing capacity every 18 months. Our reliance on systems has increased as a result, as has the risk of system malfunction and bad data.
• Data Storage Cost Rapidly Declining
  • Numerous databases on individuals, employees, and customers are maintained by organizations as a result of advancements in data storage technology and fast falling storage costs. The routine invasion of personal privacy has become possible because to these developments in data storage.
• Advance Data Analysis
  • (Improved decision making is feasible with enhanced data analysis) (Improved decision making is possible through advanced data analysis). Large amounts of data collected on individuals can be used by businesses to create detailed profiles of individual behavior.
• Advanced Networking
  • (We are able to move data from one location to another. Downloading videos, network connectivity with other machines, data theft, and hacking are all unethical issues. It is simpler to copy data from one location to another and to access sensitive data or information from a distance.

Ethics in Information Society

Ethics refers to the concepts of right and wrong that free moral agents might employ to make decisions that will direct their behavior. In small groups, they are manageable since the group tends to control the individual's conduct. The more people there are in a group, the more difficult it is to control their behavior. They now exist in a sizable population of individuals with a wide range of perspectives and experiences. Accountability for an individual's behavior becomes more difficult to enforce, while responsibility to the group becomes more difficult to police. The fundamental concepts of the information society are accountability, liability, and responsibility. Every action elicits a response. You should be mindful of the following when accessing the Internet, computers on campus, or a computer owned by your employer:

• Responsibility
  • Acknowledging the expenses, obligations, and liabilities associated with your choices.
• Accountability
  • Deciding who is to be held accountable for decisions and acts.
• Liability
  • Legally assigning accountability to an individual or group.
• Due Process
  • Ensuring that the law is adhered to accurately and fairly.

Reference

Laudon, Laudon, "Management Information Systems Managing the Digital Firm", twelfth edition