Case Study 7 – Website Links 

Han is a public servant, he is a web developer within a department of a state government. Han has  been given responsibility for developing a tourism website by the I.T. Manager Sally. Han adds various  links to news services to enliven this government webpage. These links include global news channels.  

It is later found that those sites sometimes provide news on court cases which are currently under  suppression order here in Australia as they are in process. When noticed this causes huge  embarrassment to the government department. 

Sally, the I.T manager of the department had not seen the website before it went live but even if she  had it is unlikely that she would have noticed and tested every link. In any case the links were not  problematic until a local court case gave rise to a publication suppression order. 

Sally now needs to determine who should take responsibility and what actions should be taken  about the event. She needs to prevent recurrence of this type of problem. 

Briefly discuss the dilemma for Sally. Show your utilisation of either Thomas White or Chris  MacDonald’s methodology to demonstrate how Sally might analyse and resolve the dilemma.  Provide a recommendation of what actions Sally should initiate and to whom she needs to  communicate throughout the process. 

Include in your answer those clauses from the ACS code of Ethics and ACS code of Professional  Conduct that are relevant and briefly explain why. Refer also to any relevant legislation again with an  explanation of how it relates. 

Case Study 9 – Alex the new Project Manager 

Alex has been professionally employed in IT for 10 years. He has worked in various roles including  Business Analyst, Programmer and IT Manager. He accepted an offer to join Initech Corp. as Project 

Manager, responsible for overseeing and ensuring the effective implementation of the company's  internal software projects. 

Although Alex has previous experience as an IT Manager, Initech Corp. has an existing IT Manager,  Paul, who is responsible for the server and network infrastructure. 

Alex is aware that Initech Corp.'s directors are very concerned about intellectual property theft.  They do not want any company data, including software source code, being taken to competing  businesses. 

The software developers complain to Alex that Paul takes pleasure in preventing them from being  able to do their work. They state they do not have administrative access on their own computers,  preventing them from installing tools and applications, and that they cannot use Print Screen to take  screen snapshots for use in manuals or training. 

As a Project Manager, Alex sees part of his role as removing roadblocks from the developers so they  can focus on achieving the business objectives. He speaks with Paul about their concerns. Paul states  he is just protecting the company's interests. He states if someone can use Print Screen they can  email company information as a screenshot. He states if the developers have administrative access  to their own computers they can run rogue tools to copy source code or do other things. 

Alex sees Paul's views as extreme, but he understands the complexity of the situation. The directors  do not want any intellectual property theft, but at the same time, the developers are being hindered  from doing their very jobs. It seems the simplest tasks become a struggle because they have many  constraints on what they can do. 

Alex notes that Initech Corp. requires all employees to sign a confidentiality agreement, and also an  acceptable use policy dictating how the computer systems may be used. 

While speaking with the developers Alex learns the company web site is hosted externally and is  available across the Internet. The developers upload new and modified web pages via an FTP client.  As this web server is Internet-accessible, the developers also tell Alex they sometimes upload  company source code and documents to the FTP server so they can download them at home. They  say they do this because when they have tight deadlines they prefer to work at home near their  family than sit in the office until late. They ask Alex not to tell Paul because they are concerned if he  knew he would find some way to block this. 

What should Alex do now that he has been given this information? 

Case Study 10 – Jobs for You – Employment Agency 

Jobs For You is an employment agency that specialises in filling short-term, casual labour  requirements. The company has recently been involved in several court cases where employees  claimed they had been unfairly terminated or treated. Jobs For You used several defences in  different cases. In some they said that a short-term labour hire company like theirs could provide no  guarantees of work for anyone. In another case they argued that they had offered work to the 

employee on many occasions and the employee had continually refused because the client site was  too far away or the pay was insufficient. In another case they claimed the employee was too drunk  to go to work that day. In each case the company produced diary notes of phone calls and  interactions with the employees, which they maintain on their database, as evidence. 

Word of this spread and some employees became so concerned by what Jobs For You's files on them  may say. They appealed to national privacy legislation to view their own records. 

This caused great concern to Jobs For You's management, in case the employees might say the  company was making false or discriminatory claims. Management has now instructed their HR staff  to be very careful in everything they record in the database. They still want to be able to record ‘the  truth’, as they see it, but are very concerned that the notes may be considered rude, insulting or  discriminatory if read by the employees. And so they instruct the Recruitment Manager, Stella, to  devise a set of codes to be used in the notes to represent statements such as, 'never hire this person  again', 'difficult to work with', 'can't be trusted to turn up on time' etc, so they would be  meaningless to the employees (and lawyers) and couldn't be used in court against the company. 

Stella is concerned over what she considers are the ethical and privacy concerns. Management has  told her there are no ethical issues involved and she simply needs to determine a set of codes that  allows Jobs For You to record notes about workers without fear of being sued by employees. 

How should Stella proceed?

Assignment Task 

From what you have learned during Week s 3 and 4 of your Professional Environments Course,  discuss ethical, professional and legal issues which you consider arise from this scenario. Make some  recommendations of actions which could be taken to resolve the situation and/or to minimise the  chance the scenario may recur. Support your answers with relevant references (as well as the Codes  and Laws). 

Introduction

Ethical dilemmas are a part of every business or organisation. It is imperative to address the dilemma at the right time and make a decision to ensure there are no failings. As a project manager, the role of any employee is to bring out maximum efficiency from the team. While extremely stringent measures can dampen productivity, too much leniency can cause security issues which in turn can cause company data to be compromised. 

Step 1: Analyze the consequences

The consequences of developers using the current FTP clients are the below:

1. Possible leakage of company source code and documents. This could be due to hacking or even due to a weak security system.
2. Misuse of company information.
3. Leak of customer data which could in turn lead to losing existing customers. This could further lead to prospective clients losing trust in the company.

If the developers are not allowed to use the FTP client, the work would get delayed, there would be inefficiency in deliveries and result in losing customers.

(Some parts of the solution has been blurred due to privacy protection policy)