Article Analysis On Ethical And Moral Issues In Information Management

I have read a few articles on all things that are related to ethical and moral issues that might arise in information management. Most of the articles have a very strong common ground with regard to data privacy. All information management systems are heavily dependent on the collection of user data. However, from an ethical point of view, it is very important to keep data as private as possible. All of the articles I read were very distinctly pro-data privacy, without third parties being able to buy data off social media accounts or banks to be used for advertising purposes. This was the very strong and largest overlap between all articles. The articles however disagree in the ethical ability to judge as to how to execute the data privacy. Since data need to be handled in the management systems and information systems, there is no way to completely avoid any data exchange and transfer. This puts most companies in an ethical challenge, on the one side they want to protect their client and business data, on the other hand they want to create a sustainable business model, which sometimes requires a large amount of data analysis, data set up, data sharing and so forth. Two of the articles argued that stronger legal measures have to be taken by respective governments to provide ethical and legal frameworks. The other two articles were not similar in this view, they argued it would be better to give the companies the freedom to execute ethical ways of handling the client data themselves. So, to sum up, the largest ethical issue in the articles I read were data security, and all articles were agreeable on that. But the execution was disputed among all articles quite strongly. Compare the information in those articles to the materials in Chapter 14 of your textbook. Does the premise of those articles support the overall theme of the materials in Chapter 14 of your textbook? Why or why not?

Overall, the textbook and the articles that I studied were on the same page with regard to ethics and moral issues. The overlap was quite visible and strong, which I believe is reasonable, considering ethics and moral issues with regard to information management are becoming more acknowledged in both business and IT as well as in academia. Of course, in all texts and sources it was quite biased based on the perspective the author was writing from. The private business owner in my article of course differed in his view and incentives compared to the academic professor or the private citizen, but this is simply based on regular economic incentives and views. Discuss what you learnt from those articles. In your discussion, give example(s) of your organization handles ethic concerns as they relate to information management.

I work for a small company, which does consulting for larger projects with regard to portfolio management. In our line of work, we have access to very large quantities of confidential information about clients, including social security numbers, account numbers, personal security questions, birthdays, and other financial, family, professional, and personal information. Our company has put in place a lot of ethical and legal boundaries and rules to protect the privacy and safety and confidentiality of our client data. The company is very careful on what data are being used for testing purposes as well, because often the data are being modified, meddled with, and changed. From an ethical point of view, the clients expect that no rumors about wrong information a tester might have used will end up in the public, especially not for high net worth individuals.

In my own experience from the past few years, most companies have realized that the short term gain from data sales are not the best long term strategy, because people are starting to notice the worth of their personal privacy. This has driven many companies to implement ethics committees with regard to IT management. I think this is a very good development. Additionally, safety measures to decrease universal access are becoming stronger and entities start to educate their employees on ethical issues in their departments.