Ethical Issues in IT - Do Employees Have a Right to Privacy?

Email Monitoring

A large number of employers are now monitoring their employees' emails and the IT department is typically assigned with carrying out this monitoring and reporting of any email usage violations. When asked why they are monitoring emails, employers state reasons such us wanting to ensure that their employees are being productive and using the provided computers and email software for work purposes. Even employees who are not abusing their company's email policies regarding email argue against the monitoring because they feel that their employer doesn't trust them and they dislike feeling as if their rights are left at the door when they arrive at work. This form of monitoring is becoming more commonplace, so employees are getting used to the idea that it probably won't be going away, but it still contributes to a decreased morale in the office when you feel like your bosses don't trust you. Software for email monitoring continues to improve, making it easier and easier for employers to keep track of their employees' use of their email and increasing the extent to which it is monitored.

Legal?

Miriam Schulman explains that the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act “prohibits unauthorized interception of various electronic communications, including e-mail,” but service providers are exempt and the law is usually interpreted to include employers in this exemption. Essentially, employers are within their legal right to monitor what you send and receive with the email address they provide you with especially if they own the server used for the mail as well. Legal and ethical don't always mean the same thing though and this topic is one that has had employees perturbed since its onset.

Should We Continue to do It?

Because the email address and usually, the computer used to write it, belong to the employer, I would say they have the right to know what their employees are using their property for. Employers are responsible for much of their employees' conduct while they are at work and if they are required to take responsibility for employee actions, they need to be able to have some control over employee actions. For example, I've heard of incidents where employees wrote harassing or threatening emails to other employees. Since company email addresses were used, they were able to use the emails as evidence for the subsequent termination of the employee to prove they had good reason and prevent the employee from getting unemployment.

That being said, employees should know exactly what they are allowed and not allowed to use their email for. Written policies should be created and distributed to employees when they are hired to let them know what guidelines they are to follow when using company computers and email and employees should be informed of the extent of monitoring they are under. Employers need to respect employees' privacy regarding personal email though and even if company equipment is used to read and/or send email, they do not have the right to monitor it. They can reprimand the employee for misuse of equipment, but anything said in an email should not be known to them.

References

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/business-ethics/resources/littlebrother-is-watching-you/

http://www.sanfordbrown.edu/student-life/blog/january-2014/workplace-monitoring-is-it-ethical-and-legal

Software Review - DataMagine

Document Management

Document management programs that allow IT departments to offer their companies paperless systems for their record keeping are becoming more and more popular as the demand for "green" solutions continues to grow. Paperless document systems can save a company money by shortening the amount of time it takes to process and search for documents therefore decreasing cost of labor, as well as by saving money on supplies such as paper, folders, filing cabinets, and even saving money on storage space. A great option for a paperless document management system is DataMagine by Agilysys. 

DataMagine lets you save images of documents into a database with easily searchable indexing information that allows users to find what they need quickly and without moving from behind their desks. Gone are the days of fumbling through filing cabinet after filing cabinet in search of that elusive file that you were sure was there a month ago and that you need for that meeting in an hour! DataMagine is also great for obtaining "approvals" before putting purchase orders in through the purchasing department or for making sure that all those who need to review a form for an employee can do so before it is made official. There are a million ways the product can be used, but just to give you an idea, I'll explain some of the ways we use it.

Obtaining Approvals

Depending on the cost of an order, department supervisors and upper management have to sign off on a purchase request before the order can be submitted to a vendor. After the request has been approved, a purchase order must be made, and soon after the arrival of the items, an invoice appears and confirmation that all items arrived as promised must be obtained along with approval from management before the invoice can be paid by the Accounts Payable department. This is where DataMagine has wonderfully improved our purchasing process! With DataMagine, users can create their purchase requests and submit the job right into the software where they only need to worry about selecting the proper document type and department. With this information, the program seamlessly routes the job through each step of the process. The job will appear in the correct person's DataMagine inbox where they can view it and approve it to allow it to move to the next step. When everyone in the process has approved their step and the order has arrived and been paid for, we have someone that applies the proper indexing values to the document (information used to search for the document later) and the job is "filed" away in archiving. The job can easily be found later if information is needed from the document simply by using the search option in the program. The search allows you to enter any of the indexing data used when saving the document to then search for it and any other documents that might match the criteria. For example, I can find all orders over $300 made by the Food and Beverage department between March, 2014 and May, 2014. I can also enter just the purchase order number if I am looking for one specific document. This can be very handy when accounting needs information fast!

Benefits

DataMagine is very user friendly! It only takes a about 20 minutes to show users how to enter a document for approval, how to approve any documents that have come to them, how to search for documents that have been archived, and even how to index documents into the archive. The setup and maintenance  the IT department will need to do is pretty easy as well. The back end of the system is stored as a SQL server database and the tables are well designed and easy to query. The software has to be installed and an ODBC created on each user PC. Creating the templates to route the documents to the proper people can be tedious depending on how complex the approval process is, but it's not difficult and the task can be assigned to either an IT employee or even a semi tech savvy purchasing employee. The program has proven very stable despite heavy usage throughout our corporation and when something does "break" (not just a user error),  troubleshooting the program is usually very straightforward and the Agilysys support staff are customer oriented and helpful and the user is typically back to work shortly.

DataMagine saves time, money, and space! If your documents are archived into the database, there is no reason to keep a paper copy, so you won't need filing cabinets or the space they would normally take up. Electronic documents and forms can even be used to avoid creating a paper document at all. This saves money and also has the added benefit of saving the environment. Time is saved filing, searching, compiling, and passing around documents for approvals with DataMagine. The added efficiency of a paperless process can save money in labor costs and allow employees to spend their time on other tasks. The cost of the software license, a server, and the computer storage are more than paid for with the savings.

DataMagine allows for easy tracking and accessibility of documents! Once documents are entered into DataMagine, it is easy to search the system to see what step of the approval process they are in or if they have been indexed and archived, you can easily pull them up for viewing. This will save employees from having to waste time searching for lost documents or recreating them if they cannot be found. Permission settings inside DataMagine allow IT staff to limit which users have access to what for each feature, so you can set them up for exactly what they need and keep them out of what they shouldn't see.

DataMagine is easy to integrate with other systems and there are a number of optional modules to allow customization! Last but not least, DataMagine can be integrated with other programs to allow data to be archived automatically from another source. There are also additional modules that can be purchased to make the system fit your company's individual needs better.

DataMagine is truly an amazing product that can make your company's document management substantially more efficient. Your users as well as your IT department will love the product's easy setup, use, and maintenance. I highly recommend the product!

References

http://www.agilysys.com/solutions/by-products/document-management/datamagine

Information Technology in the News

What's Going On?

One of the most well-known instances of Information Technology being in the news is the recent case involving Apple and the FBI. For those unfamiliar with the case, here is a breakdown: When Sayed Farook and Tashfeen Malik decided to gun down people at a San Bernardino, California party on December 2nd, they had made sure to destroy (literally smash to bits) their personal phones and get rid of their computer’s hard drive to presumably hide evidence of their ties with other terrorists and their plans for more terrorist attacks. The one thing they did not destroy was Farook’s company issued cell phone – an iPhone. The FBI wanted to see “who Farook was communicating with and which websites he might have visited in the days leading up to the December 2 massacre,” but this task was made difficult by the encryption software on Apple’s iPhones that makes it so that the phone will erase itself if 10 wrong passcodes are entered in a row (CNET). Apple gave the FBI Farook’s iCloud backup storage, but it only went through October 19, so the FBI wanted more information and ordered Apple to create a new, custom version of the phone’s operating system that would stop the phone from erasing after the allotted passcode attempts and make it so they could connect a supercomputer to the phone so they can use a brute force attack to find the passcode and get data off the phone. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook is quoted by Hollister and Guglielmo as saying, “In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks." (CNET). While the fight has been put on hold because of today’s announcement that the FBI unlocked the phone with help from a third party, it raised a lot of questions about digital privacy and security and about just how much power the government should have when directing private companies to create software for surveillance. 

So What is the Controversy?

Before a third party showed up on the scene to assist the FBI in cracking the iPhone, we had the FBI insisting that Apple write new software for the task stating that the law doesn’t support a company making phones that are “warrant proof” while Apple said that if they complied with the FBI’s order it would “create a new security vulnerability for untold millions of iPhone users” (Wall Street Journal). Those on the side of the FBI wanted Apple to help prevent future terrorist attacks by assisting the FBI in getting whatever data could be gathered about the terrorist groups Farook and Malik were conspiring with and hopefully, even save some lives. Those on Apple’s side argue that dangerous precedence could be set that gives the government too much authority to force private companies to create software that can be used to track and surveil citizens. While I certainly want to prevent any more terrorist attacks like Farook and Malik’s, I am not willing to give up my freedom in order to obtain a sense of safety. Even if Apple was fighting the FBI’s order only to protect their business, I am thankful that they were ready to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if need be.

References
http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-versus-the-fbi-why-the-lowest-priced-iphone-has-the-us-in-a-tizzy-faq/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-unlocks-terrorists-iphone-without-apples-help-1459202353

Bachelor of Applied Science in Digital Information Technology

Computers are in my blood. My dad is a developer and he was always tinkering on a computer while I was growing up. The interest was only in playing computer games until I finally realized how much I would truly enjoy a job working with them, but with so many areas of computing, how did I go about narrowing down what I actually wanted to do? After a bit of looking around I discovered that the Bachelor of Applied Science - Digital Information Technology degree would be a great option for me and I'm using what I have learned to help me in my job as a Computer Technician. The best way to describe the program is to say that it is part management classes and part computer classes. The management classes prepare you to supervise employees and give students an understanding of the business world and what tools they will need to navigate it properly. There is a lot more that goes into managing employees than most people realize and understanding the legalities of it as well as ways to keep employees motivated and help them with their jobs can make the task seem much less frightening. The computer classes provide the student with an overview of the areas of computing they might deal with in an Information Systems department. The computer classes won’t leave you an expert in any one area, but after finishing the program, you would understand enough of each area to manage employees in your department and -- from my understanding -- most students enter the BAS DIT program after having already earned an associate degree in a more specialized area of computing such as networking, programming, or graphic communications.

Information Technology is an exciting field to enter because there is always something new to learn as the technology continues to improve and you may even get to be a part of developing new technology in it! People that enter this field tend to value intelligence, the willingness and capability to learn and adapt quickly, and the ability to figure things out or troubleshoot. The motto “work smarter, not harder” seems to rule in the average IT department as most IT professionals highly value efficiency and are always seeking to find better ways to perform computer tasks. IT pros enjoy making life easier for people and while we get stereotyped as being nerdy and antisocial, we really do love people and have a desire to create computer systems that can make it easier to do any job. The IT field also has the advantage of being easy to make money in depending on what area you choose and how far you want to take it.

There are a lot of different jobs you can hold in Information Technology. For example, software developers create new programs while networking involves linking a group of computers together. Graphic designers put images, typography, and media together to create advertising or other layouts. Network security requires you to stay one step ahead of those who may want to hack into your system and you have to make sure your system is guarded against these threats. Database management involves keeping track of data and ensuring that the right users have access to what data they need. There are also help desk positions that require you to know basic operating system and software support so you can help the average user with minor problems.

Computing jobs represent different challenges to be tackled and professionals in computing appreciate the chance to use their minds and solve these “puzzles” as well as help make a program or setup a system that can make a business run more smoothly. People who have a knack for troubleshooting as well as an interest in organizing and leading other employees in accomplishing shared goals would do well in the BAS in Digital Information Technology program at Great Basin College.