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Keynote Address: Is it Right and is it Legal?

Keynote Address: Is it Right and is it Legal?
Keynote Address: Is it Right and is it Legal?
Should the rules for IT practitioners be the same as are self-imposed by society in general, or something extra? Engineers, and in particular IT professionals, are being called on to take more and more consideration of non-technical factors when designing their systems. Every system they design is meant to be used (ultimately) by people, and yet people are very diverse and work in unexpected ways. We see this in the manager’s role in dealing with his employees, where he now has to cater for their safety, recruitment terms, and what facilities they can and cannot use within the business, for example private e-mail. Information technology itself provides new problems, such as zombies, spam and identity theft. Most importantly, businesses now accumulate vast quantities of digital personal data on their customers. Who is to say how they may or may not use this? Does the IT professional not have a say in what is right, even what is legal? The solutions to this have to be worldwide, and yet most of us can only create a local effect. The best place for an academic to start is in training the future engineers. The paper outlines the background thinking to a Professional & Legal Issues course, given to all second year students of Information Systems, Electronics, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, at the University of Southampton, UK.
Gee, Quintin
ac0f464c-c192-4806-9c95-f0a866415c16
Gee, Quintin
ac0f464c-c192-4806-9c95-f0a866415c16

Gee, Quintin (2008) Keynote Address: Is it Right and is it Legal? International Multi Topic Conference (IMTIC'08), Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan. 11 - 12 Apr 2008. (Submitted)

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Other)

Abstract

Should the rules for IT practitioners be the same as are self-imposed by society in general, or something extra? Engineers, and in particular IT professionals, are being called on to take more and more consideration of non-technical factors when designing their systems. Every system they design is meant to be used (ultimately) by people, and yet people are very diverse and work in unexpected ways. We see this in the manager’s role in dealing with his employees, where he now has to cater for their safety, recruitment terms, and what facilities they can and cannot use within the business, for example private e-mail. Information technology itself provides new problems, such as zombies, spam and identity theft. Most importantly, businesses now accumulate vast quantities of digital personal data on their customers. Who is to say how they may or may not use this? Does the IT professional not have a say in what is right, even what is legal? The solutions to this have to be worldwide, and yet most of us can only create a local effect. The best place for an academic to start is in training the future engineers. The paper outlines the background thinking to a Professional & Legal Issues course, given to all second year students of Information Systems, Electronics, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science, at the University of Southampton, UK.

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More information

Submitted date: July 2008
Additional Information: Event Dates: 11-12 April 2008
Venue - Dates: International Multi Topic Conference (IMTIC'08), Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan, 2008-04-11 - 2008-04-12
Organisations: Electronics & Computer Science

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 266509
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/266509
PURE UUID: b8632d36-ea7c-4eac-84e6-ffbaad097c59

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Date deposited: 05 Aug 2008 08:48
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 08:29

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Contributors

Author: Quintin Gee

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