ICT Ethics and Law

Introduction:

As we know, IT is the most important factor for integrating the developing and developed countries. We cannot ignore the effect of World Wide Web in our daily life even in developing countries. The Internet is spreading into almost every part of the world and we face every day emergence of new application and technologies. This trend is transforming societies into e-societies, e-business, e-healthcare, and e-government and so forth, have already been substantially developed in many developed countries. Information and Communication Technology (ICT), as a tool of socio-economic development, is a significant issue for developing countries (Odedra 1996).

As hardware costs declining while benefits are increasing, IT has been spreading into developing countries. There is a rapid expansion in the use of IT in many sectors of the economy, particularly in public organizations. But this usually occurs with external 'assistance'. As latecomers to the IT scene, developing countries face huge difficulties - perhaps the most important being that they are becoming users of IT without building up the necessary infrastructure, planning and manpower to support it (Kirlidog 1996). Countries are being encouraged to attract economic growth by entering the 'information age', and being able to supply or compete at the multinational level. Therefore, there is no wonder that many developing countries are trying to bridge the development gap by means of technology acquisition (Castells 1996). It believes that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is one of the main factors of economic, social and cultural growth.

Business, Technology and Environment – Societal Issues:

The current ICT context in terms of ethical and responsible decisions is challenging, but also offers considerable potential. ICT business or businesses have correlations with other industrial fields as well. Information and communication technology is nowadays present in a variety of business environments, not only in firms specifically operating in the field of ICT. These are companies offering telecommunications and mobile operator services and other networking aids for private and institutional customers or firms, which are known more as information technology service or software maintenance providers. Thus, ethical and responsible management and leadership in ICT are crucial for many kinds of enterprises. The information systems themselves create new kinds of ethical and social issues and that business as such are creating them as well. These issues may be unique for this field of business and thus they create new situations and even completely new holes in the current value system. This poses ethical, social and political questions. The moral dimensions that prevail in the information society may be described in five ways: 1) information rights and obligations 2) property rights, 3) accountability and control, 4) system quality and 5) quality of life. In business there are many important questions to be handled, information rights, privacy, freedom in the information society, trade secrets, copyrights, trademarks, patents etc.

The Importance of Information Technology (IT)

Madon (2000) state that 'modernization' was perhaps the earliest theoretical approach to development, which was related to the idea of economic development. In the early days, development was often perceived as progress, and it was assumed that developing countries were going to be able to participate in this progress if the benefits of scientific advances, technology and urban-industrial development were available to them. In today's world, development is often related to 'modernization' and for developing countries modernization often represents the 'accessibility to new technology'.

IT play role in the development processes of developing countries. All economic sectors including agriculture, mining, banking, commerce, health-care, education, publishing, environment-management, energy conservation and transportation are becoming fast, flexible and information intensive (Hanna). If IT is properly used in the developing countries, it can be the main factor in increasing productivity in public administration, communications infrastructure, industry and agriculture (Hanna et al. 1986).