TITP 105 IT Professional Assignment Sample

Content Analysis

Introduction

Content analysis refers to the process of studying, understanding and then analyzing the document of any kind, like texts, audios, videos or pictures. Content analysis is used to examine certain content in a systematic manner to understand things clearly.

The report discusses and analyses the weekly content of the lecture materials. The content discussed from week 1 to week 11 were discussed thoroughly. Theoretical discussion includes the details of the major topics covered in the week followed by the definitions discussed. The interpretation identifies the most relevant information from the week’s content and finally outcomes are discussed that outlines the things learnt from the content in that week.

Background

The main objective of the report is to provide a reflective journal (content analysis) of the weekly content discussed during lectures in class. There are a total of eleven lecture presentations are provided according to which the analysis is to be conducted.

Content Analysis

Week 1: An Overview of Ethics

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics covered in Week 1 are: Ethics, Causes of unethical behavior, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics in the Business World: Importance and measures for improvement, Ethical decision making, and trends that increase the likelihood of Unethical use of Information Technology.

The main definitions discussed are:

Ethics: Moral principles that define the behavior of an individual.

Morals: Principles that give an individual the sense of right or wrong.

Virtue: A behavior that shows high moral standard of an individual.

Vice: A habit of immoral behavior.

Law: Predefined system of do’s and don’ts.

Code of ethics: Guide of principles to help people to conduct business ethically.

CSR: A model that makes an organization accountable for the consequences of its actions

Corporate Ethics Officer An officer who works towards building an ethical environment in the organization

Social Audit:  Audit conducted to measure social and ethical standing of an organization in order to make improvements wherever needed.

Interpretation

The most relevant information obtained from the content is the identification of the ethical activities. The content describes that any activity may be legal but still not be ethical. The relationship between ethics, morals and code of ethics is described along with differences between morals, ethics and law.

Outcomes

I have learnt the meaning of ethics and morals, and understood the differences between them. I understood what code of ethics mean and learnt the importance of ethics in business world. In this week, I learnt the things that promote unethical behavior in business and people responsible for this. The importance of good business ethics and corporate social responsibility is understood and what the Corporate code of ethics mean and the person who is responsible for this. Apart from this I also learnt the meaning of supply chain sustainability.

Week 2 and 3: Ethics for IT Workers and IT Users

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics discussed in Week 2 and 3 are: Ethical use of Information Technology, Ethical Issues in IT, Relationship of IT professionals with their employers, clients, suppliers, society, and other professionals, Professional code of Ethics for IT professionals, Organizations to assist IT professionals, Licensing and certification of IT professionals and legal issues associated with it, Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), Compliance and Auditing.

Major definitions discussed in Week 2 and 3 are:

Trade secret: A confidential practice of an organization that provides the organization an advantage over the other companies economically (Moberly, 2017).

Whistle-blowing: An act of exposing secret information of an organization by a person. The person is called a whistle blower and the act is considered an unethical or illegal act (Moberly, 2017).

Conflict of interest: Any conflict between the IT professionals’ and the interest of client.

Fraud: Wrongful activities carried out to obtain economic gain

Misrepresentation: Wrong or incomplete representation of something

Breach of contract: Occurs when one party fails to meet the terms of a contract

Bribery: Giving anything that has some value to an official in order to influence his thinking, behavior or decision regarding something to get advantage in business (Kohli, 2018)

Internal control: The process of controlling the internal operations of an organization to ensure that the organizational internal functions are being carried out effectively as per the standards and the legal policies and regulations (Kohli, 2018).

Separation of duties: The distributed allocation of sub-processes of process involving financial transactions among different employees in an organization (Kohli, 2018).

Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA): A law passed in United States in the year 1977 that states the bribery of any foreign official by any U.S. organization or individuals to get any advantage in business is a punishable offence (Kohli, 2018).

Resume inflation: Misrepresentation of professional or educational qualifications by an individual.

Professional code of ethics: A set of rules and principles that govern the working with a particular professional organization.

Certification: A document that witnesses the possession of certain abilities, knowledge or skills by an individual.

Government license: The permit provided by the government to run a business or an organization.

Reasonable person standard: A standard set up legally to calculate or understand the actions of a normal human being under some circumstances (Rostron, 2018).

Reasonable professional standard: Standard to measure the actions of a professional worker under some circumstances (Rostron, 2018).

Professional malpractice: The careless use of professional practices by a professional that result in economic, reputation or any other loss (Rostron, 2018).

Firewall: A network security barrier that is responsible for controlling all the network traffic that inflows or outflows from the organizational network.

AUP: Acceptable Use Policy is the set of policies that an individual must abide by, for using the organizational technical resources.

Interpretation

The most relevant information about the content is the ethical issues that are related with the IT professionals and the effective management of IT practices and issues.

Outcomes

In the Weeks 2 and 3, following were the outcomes:

• Understood the relationship patterns in the IT profession and the ethical issues related with each.

• Learnt the Ethical Issues faced by IT professionals.

• The actions that could encourage the Ethical behavior in IT.

• Understood the Acceptable Use Policy and its applications.

Week 4: Intellectual Property

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics discussed in Week 4 are: Meaning of Intellectual property , how to protect the intellectual property, some related current issues as example, copyright, copyright infringement, various agreements related to intellectual property, Patents, Patent infringement, trade secrets and related laws, Trademark and trademark infringement.

Major definitions discussed in Week 4 are:

Intellectual property: It refers to the intangible developments by the human mind, like inventions or arts, copyrights, patents etc.

Copyright: Copyright is defined as right provided exclusively to the inventor of the original work to use the work for his personal objectives.

Copyright Infringement: Use of copyrighted content without knowledge of permission of the copyright holder.

Patent: Patent is a right provided exclusively to the owner of patent to use, make, buy or sell the specific creation only by him legally and none other than him has the right to use, make, buy or sell the creation.

Trade Secrets: A confidential practice of an organization that provides the organization an advantage over the other companies economically (Moberly, 2017).

Plagiarism:  Plagiarism refers to the use of ideas and information produced by some other person as one’s own without referencing the work of that specific person (Lemley, 2019).

Reverse Engineering: A process of deconstructing a product with an intension to know the components, detailed design, architecture or composition of that product (Lemley, 2019).

Open Source Code: A free to use source code available on internet that is distributed to the users under a license by the owner of that software (Lemley, 2019).

Competitive intelligence: A systematic approach to collect and analyze data and information collected from different sources and using that for organizational advantage (Lemley, 2019).

Trademark: A mark, sign or any form of design allotted exclusively to an organization to mark its products. It is used to represent a source and used to identify that a certain product belongs to that source.

Interpretation

The most relevant information provided in the content is the meaning of intellectual property, its types and measures that can be undertaken to protect intellectual property.

Outcomes

In Week 4, following were the outcomes:

• Understood the meaning of intellectual property.

• Learnt the different kinds of intellectual property we deal in daily life.

• Understood the measures that could be taken to protect one’s intellectual property.

Week 5: Ethics of IT Organizations

Theoretical Discussion

The major contents discussed in Week 5 are: Diversity at workplace, contingent IT workers, factors promoting independent contractors, H1-B Workers and need for H1-B workers, H1B visa program, Offshore outsourcing and related strategies, Whistle blowing and Green Computing.

The definitions discussed are:

Contingent work: It refers to a non-permanent type of work that is usually contract based. In contingent work, the payments are made on the basis of work done or hours worked and provide lesser job security (Tran and Sokas, 2017).

Employee leasing: Employee leasing is a contract based activity in which the official employer sends the employees to work for some other organization and the employer responsibilities are carried out jointly by the leasing as well as official employer (Tran and Sokas, 2017)..

Professional Employer Organization (PEO): It refers to an outsourcing organization that provides employees to other organization on contractual basis (Tran and Sokas, 2017).

Gig Economy: An economy that features short-term contractual work instead of permanent work (Tran and Sokas, 2017).

Independent contractor:  It refers to an individual who supplies goods or services to an organization on contractual basis. An independent contractor is not associated to one particular organization (Tran and Sokas, 2017).

H-1B visa: The H1-B Visa is a visa that allows the U.S. organizations to temporarily employ non-immigrant foreign nationals for specialty occupations.

Outsourcing: Refers to the process of obtaining goods or services from other organization and using them in one’s.

Offshore outsourcing: Refers to the process of employing an external organization from some other country to carry out their business in one’s country.

Whistle-blowing: An act of exposing secret information of an organization by a person. The person is called a whistle blower and the act is considered an unethical or illegal act (Moberly, 2017).

False Claims Act: A U.S. federal law according to which the defrauding of governmental programs is a punishable offence (Probst, Petitta, Barbaranelli, and Lavaysse, 2018).

Green computing: It refers to the use of computers and its associated technology in an environmental-friendly way (Saha, 2018).

Interpretation

The most useful information in the content is the discussion of ethical and legal issues related to the contingent workers and H-1B workers, whistle blowing and outsourcing. Other relevant information shared is about green computing and initiatives taken in the field.

Outcomes

Following are the outcomes of week 5:

• Understood the meaning of contingent workers, H-1B visa holders, and offshore outsourcing.

• Understood legal and ethical issues are associated with the use of contingent workers, H-1B visa holders, and offshore outsourcing companies.

• Understood the concept of whistle blowing and associated legal and ethical issues.

• Learnt green computing and initiatives in this field.

Week 6: Ethical Decisions in Software Development

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics discussed in Week 6 are: Software Quality and its importance, ethical issues faced in software development, reasons that attribute towards poor quality software, strategies for improving software quality, software product liability, software development methodologies, software testing, Safety Critical Systems development, Annualized Loss Expectancy, Risk Management and Quality Management Standards.

The major definitions discussed are:

Software Quality: software quality is the measurement of the quality of software design and software functionality.

Business Information System: The systems that facilitate information dissemination within an organization.

Decision Support System: An information system that facilitates decision making process within an organization.

Warranty: Assurance provided to buyers of a product that the product meets certain quality standards.

Software development methodology: A methodology used in the development process of software like Waterfall development, agile development etc.

Quality assurance (QA): The process of maintaining the quality of product to a certain level by monitoring the product since development to delivery.

Dynamic testing: The testing carried out at runtime when the code is actually in execution. There are two types: Black box testing and white box testing.

Static testing: The testing carried out without actual execution of program.

CMMI-Development (CMMI-DEV): CMMI - Development includes the processes aimed at improving the development processes of products and services developed by an organization.

Safety-critical system: Any system whose failure can cause serious consequences like serious damage to property or injury or death of an individual.

Annualized loss expectancy: The annualized loss expectancy is the product of the single loss expectancy and the annual rate of occurrence.

Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA): The process of examining a system for finding out maximum possible modes of failures, their effects and possible reasons.

ISO 9001 family of standards: A set of standards that define that the product meets consumers’ needs and requirements within statutory and regulatory conditions.

Interpretation

The most useful information in the content is the meaning of software quality, its importance and management. Other relevant information include potential ethical issues that the software manufacturers face when making decisions that involve trade-offs between project schedules, project costs, and software quality.

Outcomes

The outcomes of Week 6 were:

• Understood the meaning of software quality, and its importance.

• Ethical issues faced in software quality management.

• Learnt about strategies to develop and maintain quality systems.

Week 7: Privacy

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics discussed in Week 7 are: Right to privacy, laws to protect personal privacy, ethical issues associated with privacy, consumer profiling, related strategies and ethical issues, e-discovery, workplace monitoring, and advanced surveillance and related ethical issues.

The major definitions discussed in Week 7 are:

Information privacy: The process of secluding personal information by an individual or an organization(West and Bowman, 2016).

Electronic Surveillance: The process of monitoring an individual, a home, or an organization by electronic means like cameras, call tapping etc (West and Bowman, 2016).

Bill of Rights: The United States Bill of Rights comprises the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.

National Security Letter (NSL): A national security letter is a letter issued by the U.S. government to get various data and records about a service subscriber for national security purposes.

Cookies: Cookies are files containing small pieces of user information and are created when user visits a new website(West and Bowman, 2016).

Tracking software: Software used to gather the real time information of an individual(West and Bowman, 2016).

Electronic discovery (e-discovery): The collecting, preparing, reviewing and producing the information stored electronically on devices for civil or criminal cases (West and Bowman, 2016).

Electronically stored information (ESI): The information stored in any electronic device (West and Bowman, 2016).

Cyber loafing: The illegitimate use of provided internet access at work by employees of an organization.

Interpretation

The most relevant information provided in the Week 7 is Information privacy and associated laws. It provides the information on laws and their applications and court rulings as well as certain anonymity issues.

Outcomes:

In Week 7, following are the outcomes:

• Understood the meaning of information privacy and associated laws.

• Learnt about the laws on privacy, and court rulings.

• Learnt about electronic Surveillance, and fair information practices.

• Understood key privacy and anonymity issues.

Week 8: Freedom of Expression

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics covered in Week 8 are: First Amendment Rights, Obscene speech, defamation, freedom of expression and associated ethical issues, internet censorship, pornography on internet, hate speech, fake news and some lawsuits.

The major definitions discussed are:

Freedom of Speech: The right to explain or say one’s feelings without any restriction.

Defamation: refers to a legal claim that involves damage to an individual’s reputation caused by misrepresentation of a fact .

Internet Filter: The process to restrict access to certain websites.

Internet Censorship: Internet censorship refers to controlling the content that can be accessed or published on internet by some regulatory bodies.

Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP): It refers to a lawsuit filed in response to controversial speech or public issue.

Doxing: A practice of finding out and making public, the private or sensitive information about an individual on internet.

John Doe lawsuit: It refers to a lawsuit where names "John" or "Jane" Doe is used for the name of the parties against whom the lawsuit was filed, because of the un-identification of the party.

Hate Speech: A speech that showcases hate towards an individual or particular group on the basis of religion, sex, or race.

Interpretation

The most relevant content discussed in Week 8 is the issues related to the freedom of expression that deal with the use of information technology and the protection of freedom of expression.

Outcomes

Following are the outcomes of week 8:

• Understood the freedom of expression in U.S., the basis of protecting it and the associated laws.

• Learnt about the key federal laws that affect freedom of expression on internet.

• Understood the ethical issues related to the freedom of expression and the use of information technology for expression.

Week 9: Cyberattacks and Cybersecurity

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics covered in Week 9 are: Computer incidents, their reasons and effects, cyberattacks prevention, security programs, actions taken in case of security breach etc.

The major definitions discussed are:

Ransomware: Malware that encrypts the data on a system into some unrecognizable format until the demands of the attackers are met .

Virus: A small computer program that leads to unexpected faults in the computer software systems.

Worm: A program that enters the memory of the system and duplicates itself.

Trojan horse: A program in which a program that seem to be harmless, hides malicious file inside it (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, Saylor, and Tafoya, 2019).

Spam: The sending of unsolicited emails to large number of email account holders (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, Saylor, and Tafoya, 2019).

Rootkit: A set of programs that provides an unauthorized administrator access to the attacker(Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, Saylor, and Tafoya, 2019).

 Advanced persistent threat (APT): An attack that provides the attacker an access to the network with an intention to steal data and information.

Phishing: The fraudulent activity of using email to obtain the personal information of an individual.

Cyber-espionage: The deployment of malware to steal data and information from organizations, military or other government agencies (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, Saylor, and Tafoya, 2019).

Cyber-terrorism: The illegitimate use of IT to destroy national infrastructure (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, Saylor, and Tafoya, 2019).

Firewall: A network security barrier that is responsible for controlling all the network traffic that inflows or outflows from the organizational network.

Router: A device that is used to connect several networks together and transfers data between them.

Encryption: The conversion of data in an unreadable format in such a way that only authorized parties decrypt and understand it (Taylor, Fritsch, Liederbach, Saylor, and Tafoya, 2019).

Intrusion detection system (IDS): The hardware or software systems that guards the system and its resources and alerts on detection of unauthorized access or intrusion trial.

Interpretation

The most important content discussed in Week 9 is the strategies that can be implemented to build a strong security program to prevent cyber-attacks. The key elements to a risk based security strategy are discussed that could be used to develop a strong strategy to fight against or prevent cyber-attacks.

Outcomes

The following are the outcomes of week 9:

• Learnt about various types of cyber-crimes and reasons for their prevalence.

• Understood various federal Laws for Prosecuting Computer Attacks

• The risk assessment and disaster recovery methods are learnt.

• Understood various regulatory standards and forensics.

Week 10: Social Media

Theoretical Discussion

The topics discussed in week 10 are: social media and various platforms, social media marketing, the concepts of paid and earned media, social shopping, ethical issues related to social networking, cyber-abuse, and how to prevent it.

The major definitions discussed are:

Social media: The communication system based on internet that facilitate people to communicate online with each other sharing messages, pictures, audios, or videos.

Social networking platform: The platforms that are used by people to build their social networks. Examples are facebook and twitter.

Social network marketing: The use of social networking sites for marketing a product or service.

Paid Media: The displaying of advertisements or messages to the users of social media through a third party by paying some amount.

Earned Media: The marketing of an organization that is done through the activities on social media without payment like tweeting or re-tweeting, or through post sharing.

Social shopping platforms: The social media platforms that provide online shopping facilities to their users.

Cyber-abuse: Refers to any form of mental or physical abuse of an individual through the use of internet (Davis and Schmidt, 2016).

Cyber-bullying: Refers to a form of cyber-abuse in which the victim faces emotional distress due to the hurtful comments or humiliating activities of the attacker (Davis and Schmidt, 2016).

Cyber-stalking: Refers to a form of cyber-abuse in which the victim is being stalked on internet causing him to live in fear and distress (Davis and Schmidt, 2016).

Interpretation

The most relevant information discussed in week 10 is the use of social networking by individuals as well as by the organizations. The ethical issues associated with the use of social networks and other social media are also discussed.

Outcomes

The outcomes of the content discussed in the week 10 were:

• Understood the individual as well as business use of social networks.

• Learnt about various social media tools.

• Learnt about the key ethical issues associated with the use of social networks and other social media.

Week 11: The Impact of Information Technology on Society

Theoretical Discussion

The important topics covered in week 11 were: Standard of living and impact of IT, worker productivity, drivers of productivity performance, national productivity rates and factors affecting them, artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, telemedicine and associated legal and ethical issues.

The major definitions discussed are:

Gross domestic product (GDP): The widely used scale to measure the standard of living in a country.

Labor productivity: A scale used for the measurement of economic performance by comparing the production of goods and services and the number of labor hours it took to produce those goods and services.

Artificial intelligence: An interdisciplinary field that deals with creation of machines with human like intelligence (Bini, 2018).

Machine learning: A form of artificial intelligence that involves creation of programs that can evolve with experience (Bini, 2018).

Robotics: A discipline of engineering that involves the creation of systems that perform functions that need a high degree of precision (Bini, 2018).

Natural language processing: A form of artificial intelligence that deals with creation of technology that facilitate the computers in understanding, manipulating or generating natural languages(Bini, 2018).

Clinical decision support (CDS): A process and set of tools that facilitate in clinical decision making activities (Bini, 2018).

Tele-health: Electronic Health care system that provides various health care supporting activities.

Telemedicine: Electronic Health care system that provides medical care to needy individuals at a distance far from the healthcare providers.

Interpretation

The most relevant information retrieved from content in week 11 is the applications of Information Technology on healthcare systems and the effects of artificial intelligence, machine learning , robotics and NLP on future workforce.

Outcomes

The following are the outcomes of week 11:

• Learnt the effects of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, and natural language processing on the future workforce.

• Understood the relationship between IT investment and productivity growth in U.S.

• Understood the impacts of the application of IT on health care services.

Conclusion

The report discusses and analyses the weekly content of the lecture materials. The content discussed from week 1 to week 11 are discussed thoroughly. Theoretical discussion includes the details of the major topics covered in the week followed by the definitions discussed. The interpretation identifies the most relevant information from the week’s content and finally outcomes are discussed that outlines the things learnt from the content in that week.

References

Moberly, R., 2017. Confidentiality and Whistleblowing. NCL Rev., 96, p.751.

Kohli, R., 2018. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Am. Crim. L. Rev., 55, p.1269.

Rostron, A., 2018. Ethics, Malpractice and Professional Liability in Family Law Cases: An Annotated Bibliography, 2013-2018. J. Am. Acad. Matrimonial Law., 31, p.559.

Lemley, P.S.M.M.A., 2019. Intellectual Property in the New Technological Age: 2019 (Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley).

Tran, M. and Sokas, R.K., 2017. The gig economy and contingent work: An occupational health assessment. Journal of occupational and environmental medicine, 59(4), p.e63.

Saha, B., 2018. Green computing: Current research trends. International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, 6(3), pp.467-469.

West, J.P. and Bowman, J.S., 2016. Electronic surveillance at work: An ethical analysis. Administration & Society, 48(5), pp.628-651.

Taylor, R.W., Fritsch, E.J., Liederbach, J., Saylor, M.R. and Tafoya, W.L., 2019. Cyber crime and cyber terrorism.

Davis, N. and Schmidt, C., 2016. Cyberbullying and cyber abuse intervention: The three-tiered model for schools. Journal of Creativity in Mental Health, 11(3-4), pp.366-377.

Bini, S.A., 2018. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and cognitive computing: what do these terms mean and how will they impact health care?. The Journal of arthroplasty, 33(8), pp.2358-2361.

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