Ethics Related to Information Systems

Suitability of Sri Lankan socio/cultural/political/legal environment for enforcing ethics related to Information Systems deployment and use in an organization.
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1. Ethics, Moral and Law of the Civilized Society
Ethics and the morals defines the good and the bad, right and the wrong, do’s and don’ts in terms of the human behavior in the civilized society. They are not written or documented anywhere but in practice by the societies in varying degree. Ethics and Morals have been in existence for thousands of years and had become the fundamentals of the civilized human society. They have been highly influenced by various religions associated in each society and how they are practiced could be different in each society. Ethics and morals are much more deep rooted than the laws. What is ethical and morally wrong may not be legally wrong. “Morals refer to behavior customary in our culture or society. Morals may change as you move from one society to the next.
Ethics refer to your personal standards of right and wrong. Ethics do not change as you move from one society to the next”
Source “Wikipedia “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_decision”
Laws on the other hand are defined by the society for the benefit of the society and are enforceable whereas the ethic and morals are not. Generally law has been introduced by the legislators and or the judiciary to protect the society where the ethics and morals have failed to control. Generally law applicable to the society you live in is the law of the land and there are several major influences in the world such as Roman Dutch law, English Law and had been customized to suit each country and the type of application such as contract law, civil law, commercial law, Intellectual property law etc.
As per Laudon given below are six traditional principles that can be used to help forming an ethical decision:

1. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 2. If an action is not right for everyone to take, it is not right for anyone. 3. If an action cannot be taken repeatedly, it should not be taken at any time. 4. Take the action that achieves the higher or greater value. 5. Take the action that produces the least harm or least cost. 6. All tangible objects are assumed owned by someone else unless specifically declared otherwise.
Source “Laudon Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems”
Given this context Sri Lankan society comes from over 2500 years of heritage (civilized society) with an internationally recognized law, greatly influenced by Roman Dutch law and English laws and as per the ancient legal principle Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it.
People of the land are very much aware of the ethics and laws of the land hence one would not expect to:
Forged identity of someone and carry out a banking transaction or sell a land that does not belong to you
Make commercial benefit from someone else’s creation or original work by reproducing music CD for resale
Being a cashier of a company be irresponsible and misappropriate company funds for your own benefit
As a member of the personal department to use personal information of others for your own benefit
A credit card user would not expect the retailer to misuse the credit card information and or reuse the card information without the owner’s consent
As a motorist and pedestrians you are expected to obey the motor traffic rules
These are some of the ethical, moral and legal behaviors one is expected to follow in a civilized society and always there would be a minority that would violate them. Hence the individuals, organizations and societies take precaution to avoid any such behaviors. When such violations become more frequent the societies tend to introduce laws that are enforceable to prevent them and protect the society.

2. Ethics and Law for the Information Systems and Information Society
I would argue that Information Society is a subset of the human society and the people who participate in the information society are from the human society who is literate and educated. Hence the Ethics, Morals and Law of the society is applicable to the information Society as well. Further the ethics are the personal standards of the individuals and would be applicable to information society as well
Information society is very young compared to the civilized human society. With the advent of Web 2.0, Social Media Networks and the developments in the Internet and e commerce in the last 5 years, the information systems have been extended to become a real society. Before that it was largely private networks managed by central IT departments. With these developments what was bad practices had become essential and what was good had become obsolete. More and more people are embracing the technology and using them to interact and transact with the businesses.
Ethics, morals and Laws related to Information systems and Society needs to be defined at 2 different levels i.e. For the use of corporate users and for the user of external users and they are in relation to the creation, management, disposal and use of information and related activities. The issue of management becomes more complex as the information systems are not physical but virtual.
As per Loudan one should consider following 5 dimensions in thinking about ethical, moral, social and political issues regarding Information systems

Source “Laudon Chapter 4 Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems” 1. Information rights and obligations.
What information rights do individuals and organizations possess with respect to themselves? What can they protect? What obligations do individuals and organizations have concerning this information?

2. Property rights and obligations.
How will traditional intellectual property rights be protected in a digital society in which tracing and accounting for ownership are difficult and ignoring such property rights is so easy?

3. Accountability and control.
Who can and will be held accountable and liable for the harm done to individual and collective information and property rights?

4. System quality.
What standards of data and system quality should we demand to protect individual rights and the safety of society?

5. Quality of life.
What values should be preserved in an information- and knowledge-based society? Which institutions should we protect from violation? Which cultural values and practices are supported by the new information technology?

Development in the Information technology is creating new situations that would need to be address by the users and it would take some time for the society to respond to these in terms of ethics, standards and laws to address them till then the users would have to operate within the common knowledge and general ethical and moral standards and laws in dealing with these situations. Hence the ethical, moral standards and the Laws of the land would govern these. 3. Enforcing ethics related to information systems in organizations in Sri Lanka
IT literacy rate in the country is increasing fast due to the government intervention 10% in 2004 30% in 2009 and expected to reach 60% soon. ICTA is in the forefront of this initiative and they are also making the necessary changes in the policy and legal frame work to carry out IT & related activities legitimately and protect the society. Over the years ICTA and the other related government agencies have been able to introduce the following * Computer Crimes Act No. 24 of 2007 * Payment And Settlement Systems Act, No. 28 of 2005 * Payment Devices Frauds Act No.30 of 2006 * Information and Communication Technology Act No.27 of 2003 * E-Transaction Act
The above Acts addresses the Information rights and obligations, Property rights and obligations and Accountability and control and not so much of the System quality and the Quality of life as per the Loudan model. I would expect the internal corporate procedures, policies and Service Level agreements would address them in time to come.
More established organizations have taken these issues seriously and have adopted measures to counter them in particular they have address the issue of Software piracy to a great extent. This also had created affordability issues and as a alternative they have moved in to open source solutions where appropriate. At the corporate level policies are in place or being introduced to educate the corporate users and time to time one would see action against violations of such incidents. In my opinion it had been more of ignorance than gross violation of Ethics with regards to Information systems in Sri Lanka and the corporate have been able to address this with education and introduction of proper procedures to manage them. However such enforcements are at the basic level and the organizations should attempt to improve the same as more and more internal and external people would be interacting with the information system in the future.
As the ICT literacy is growing and the businesses are enabling web based solutions such as online banking, Ez Cash, Online stores etc educating the public is also important both in terms of legal aspects and ethical aspects and should be part of the ICT literacy initiative.

References http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_decision Retrieved on 20, August 2012. http://www.icta.lk/index.php/get/category/2-p Retrieved on 20th August 2012.
Kenneth C. Laudon, (2006), Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, 10th Edition, United States of America: Prentice Hall

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_decision  Retrieved on 20, August 2012. http://www.icta.lk/index.php/get/category/2-p Retrieved on 20th August 2012. Kenneth C. Laudon, (2006), Management Information Systems: Managing the Digital Firm, 10th Edition, United States of America: Prentice Hall