CODE OF ETHICS FOR PROFESSIONALS OF INFORMATION

SYSTEMS – CEPIS MODEL

Helena Dulce Campos

Departament of Information Systems, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Azurém 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal

Luis Amaral

Departament of Information Systems, Universidade do Minho, Campus de Azurém 4800-058 Guimarães, Portugal

Keywords: Information systems, codes of ethics, professional societies, professional competences, professional ethics.

Abstract: On the area of Information Systems Technology (IST) there is a multiplicity of competences and

knowledge. In order the professionals may carry them out with success and great advantage, the existence of

a structured and standardized framework that could be used as a reference for any organization, is needed.

Parallel to this problematic there still exists the acknowledgement of the impossibility of a technological life

without ethics. So, a Code of Ethics for Professionals of Information Systems - CEPIS it will be proposed.

1 INTRODUCTION

Looking to the Portuguese situation related to

professions, competences and code of ethics of the

IST professionals, we could conclude that there does

not exist such a standard. Therefore, the objective of

this work is to develop a model - CEPIS - Code of

Ethics for Professionals of Information Systems -

that standardises the ethical behaviour of IST

professionals adapted to the portuguese situation. In

order to achieve this objective, we propose: (1) a

pattern of organizational and operational

competences and respective professional skills; (2)

the principles and obligations of the professionals

for each competence; (3) a code of ethics for each of

the identified competences – Organizational and

Operational - and Professional Skills.

2 RELATED WORK

Ethical questions have been worrying human kind

since humans’ beings began to live together because

ordered, peaceful and productive communities are

not possible without guide rules to know how, when

and what one should or should not do.

As time went by, communities spread largely,

their rules became codes of behaviour in order to

ensure everyone knew about their rights and duties

and punishments were established when

community’s ethical rules were violated. When

professionals formed their own communities, they

developed codes of behaviour which were needed

for the well-being of their members and others,

namely, with the Hippocratic Oath in the medical

community. In the outset, the Information Systems

(IS), unlike Law and Medicine, were not a

controlled profession (Davison, 2000). Later,

professional associations recognized the need of

establish standards of ethical behaviour for their own

protection as well as for the protection of those they

serve.

Computer-related legislation started in the late

1970s. However, the need for ethical behaviour

among computer professionals was already

recognized by the late 1960s as the use of computers

quickly spread in academic and business

organizations. Because computer laws did not exist,

professional organizations initiated their own ethical

codes (OZ, 1992).

Historically, professional associations viewed

code of ethics as mechanisms to establish their status

as a profession or as a means to regulate their

membership and thereby convince the public that

they deserve to be self-regulating. Codes of ethics

have tended to list possible violations and threaten

sanctions for such violations (Gotterbarn et al,

1998).

The Association for Computing Machinery

(ACM) was pioneer of the first code, the Code of

Professional Conduct, was adopted in 1972. The

479

Dulce Campos H. and Amaral L. (2006).

CODE OF ETHICS FOR PROFESSIONALS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS – CEPIS MODEL.

In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 479-482

DOI: 10.5220/0002491004790482

 SciTePress

latest ACM code, the Code of Ethics and

Professional Conduct was adopted in 1992 and takes

a new direction (Anderson et al, 1993). Others

organizations like Australian Computer Society

(ACS), American Society for Information Systems

(ASIS), Association of Information Technology

Professionals (AITP), British Computer Society

(BCS), Canadian Information Processing Society

(CIPS), Computer Society of India (CSI), Computer

Society of South Africa (CSSA), Data Processing

Management Association (DPMA), Hong Kong

Computer Society (HKCS), Institute for

Certification of Computer Professionals (ICCP),

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

(IEEE), Institute for Management of Information

System IMIS, Singapore Computer Society (SCS),

and Software Engineering Ethics and Professional

Practices (SEEPE), have their own code of ethics.

At Portugal exists an Information Systems

Association but does not exist a code.

3 CODE OF ETHICS FOR

PROFESSIONALS OF

INFORMATION SYSTEMS -

CEPIS

A professional code of ethics must address specific

high-risk activities within the scope of daily

operations of the professionals´ work or activities

(Ferrel, 1999). A profession’s code of ethics is

perhaps its most visible and explicit enunciation of

its professional norms (Frankel, 1989).

It is essential maintain high levels of professional

competence by continually upgrading of the skills

and knowledge, to maximise the potential for

lifetime employability.

In order to reach our goal, as referred above, the

model will comprises three components that will be

detailed below.

3.1 A Pattern of Organizational and

Operational Competences and

Respective Professional Skills

A pattern of organizational and operational

competences and respective professional skills is

defined as a tridimensional matrix. The matrix

identifies and classifies a pattern of competences –

organizational and operational – and respective

skills and levels of professional responsibilities

adjusting to the respective importance, that the IST

have in the organizations, and always aiming at the

technological and methodological evolutions is

proposed. See table 1 and, figure 1 and 2 as an

example of an extract of the proposed matrix.

Organizational

Competences

(ORGC)

Operational

Competences

(OPC)

Professional

Skills

(PS)

Business Analysis

Data Analysis

Technical Authority

Systems Design

Network Design

Database Design

Programming / Software Development

Safety Engineering

Software Engineering

Web Site Specialism

Systems Development

Systems Testing

Systems Ergonomics Human Factors

Media Creation

Systems Integration

Software Integration

Systems Installation/decommissioning

Development

Implementation

Installation & Integration

Installation & Implementation

Table 1: Extract of the one competences pattern matrix (Adapted from “BCS Skills Manager”).

ICEIS 2006 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION

480

3.2 Principles and Obligations of the

Professionals for Each

Competence

Identified the main competences and skills of the

IST professionals, it also have to be identified the

fundamental ethical principals, in order to achieve

their better performance. In a first analyse, these

principals will include generic moral imperatives,

more specific professional responsibilities in the

performance of the profession, imperatives of

organizational leadership and the biggest conformity

possible.

As a result of this work, it must be achieved a

proposal for a code of ethics consisting of two parts:

The principle fundamental ethics, immutable in

time and place, that is found above all philosophical

and political concept and who are equal in any

profession.

On the performing of each profession the

principle specific ethics can vary in time and place.

3.3 A Code of Ethics for Each of the

Identified Competences

In order to observe if there exists the concern and

practice of ethical professional attitudes at an

academic and organizational level, a fieldwork will

be developed.

For us, the term professionals not only include

academicals, professionals, researchers, executives

and consulters but also students of the IST area (who

will be the professionals of the near future) (Couger,

1989). So the fieldwork will be split into two great

sides: the academic and the organizational.

On the academic side, the work to be developed

consists of an analysis of how a course in particular

(Degree or MBA) prevents on their curriculum an

ethical formation of their students. Namely, if there

exists ethical disciplines that identify aspects that

leads to ethical behaviours and preoccupations; that

prepares them to deal with ethical questions; that

alerts them for what kind of ethical behaviour is

acceptable or not and that encourage them for better

practices.

On the organizational side, to give an answer to

one of the key problems referred on the development

of the code (the fact that the validation of the

individuals who were going to be influenced by the

code completely is apart), we proceed with the

fieldwork that will consist on the application of the

proposed CEPIS model, in the different

organizations and areas and that possesses a IST

department, hoping to obtain as a final result the

validation and the contribution of the model in the

enrichment and improvement of the performance of

the professionals in the IST communities. The great

Figure 1: Operational Competence – Systems Development.

CODE OF ETHICS FOR PROFESSIONALS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS – CEPIS MODEL

481

finality would be that the own IST professionals will

test the proposed model in order to be validated

empirically.

On the application of the code it is necessary to have

in mind the own requirements of each organisation,

the respective individual competences attributed to

their professionals; their culture; their mission; their

tradition; their strategic vision; their history; their

dimension; their image and their market, i.e. the

context were it is inserted. So, possibly there will be

found surprises and even interesting establishments.

4 SUMMARY

To summarize a Code of Ethics for Professionals of

Information Systems – CEPIS model – has been

outlined. It is hoped that, once developed, this model

will represent a practical contribution to de existence

of a Code of Ethics that could be applied to the

Portuguese professionals.

REFERENCES

ACM, Association for Computing Machinery

,http://www.acm.org, accessed on 5 October 2005.

ACS, Australian Computer Society,

http://www.acs.org.au/, accessed on 17 October 2005.

AITP, Association of Information Technology

Professionals, http://www.aitp.org, accessed on 17

October 2005.

Anderson, R., Johnson, D., Gotterbarn, D. ,and Perrolle, J.,

1993. Using the New ACM Code of Ethics in

Decision Making. Communications Of the ACM,

Vol.36, No.2, pp. 98-107.

ASIS, American Society for Information Systems,

http://www.asis.org, accessed on 17 October 2005.

BCS, British Computer Society,

http://www.bcs.org/BCS/AboutBCS/codes, accessed

on 17 October 2005.

Berleur, J., Duquenoy, P., Holvast, J., Jones, M., Kimppa,

K., Sizer, R. and Whitehouse, D., 2004. Criteria and

Procedures for Developing Codes of Ethics or of

Conduct, IFIP-SIG9,2.2, IFIP Special Interest Group

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CIPS, Canadian Information Processing Society,

http://www.cips.ca/about/, accessed on 17 October

2005.

Couger, J. D., 1989. Preparing IS Students to Deal With

Ethical Issues, MIS Quartely, pp. 211-18.

CSI, http://www.csi-india.org, accessed on 17 October

2005.

CSSA, Computer Society of South Africa

http://www.cssa.org.za, accessed on 17 October 2005.

Davison, R. M., 2000. Professional Ethics in Information

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DPMA, Data Processing Management Association

http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/WorldCodes/DP

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Ferrel, O.C., 1998. An Assessment of the Proposed

Academy of Marketing Science Code of Ethics for

Marketing Educator, Journal of Business Ethics,

19(2), pp. 225-228.

Frankel, M.S., 1989. Professionals Codes: Why, How, and

With What Impact?, Journal of Business Ethics, pp.

109-105.

HKCS, Hong Kong Computer Society

http://www.hkcs.org.hk, accessed on 17 October 2005.

ICCP, Institute for Certification of Computer

Professionals, http://www.iccp.org, accessed on 17

October 2005.

IEEE, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,

http://www.ieee.org/portal/site, accessed on 17

October 2005.

IMIS, Institute for Management of Information System,

http://www.imis.org.uk/, accessed on 17 October

2005.

OZ, E., 1992. Ethical Standards for Information Systems

Professionals: A Case for a Unified Code. MIS

Quartely, pp. 423-433.

SCS, Singapore Computer Society, http://www.scs.org.sg/,

accessed on 17 October 2005.

SEEPE, Software Engineering Ethics and Professional

Practices - This Code was developed by the IEEE-

CS/ACM joint task force

http://csciwww.etsu.edu/gotterbarn/SECEPP, accessed

on 17 October 2005.

Figure 2: Professional skills - Business Analysis.

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