ICTICT418 Contribute to Copyright Ethics and Privacy

Part B – Privacy

Privacy requirements in Australia:

The near mandatory need to be “online” in the increasingly global economy has driven business forward in leaps and bounds within Information and Communication Technology. This technological growth has been an enabling tool for business. Increases in the speed of response of systems and the internet have provided flexibility and accessibility bringing great benefits to business and clients. Client information and requirements are now accessible from all corners of the globe.

This presents a dilemma; that of how we secure information that we, as business IT professionals, are charged with caring for. Australia has a Privacy Act that governs what we must do to ensure protection of personal, sensitive data. The act is constantly being updated to cater for new technological advances. Keeping up to date with these changes is paramount in being successful in securing private data.

You will need access to the internet, and will need to go to https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-law/privacy-act/ and https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-law/privacy-act/australian-privacy-principles and https://www.oaic.gov.au/agencies-and-organisations/guides/app-quick-reference-tool and examine the content in each area.

Ensure that you understand the Australian Privacy Principles.

Now read the article ‘Privacy Impact Assessment Guide’. You can search the internet for this, or retrieve it from the government’s privacy website. Pay particular attention to the section named ‘What is personal information?’ to explore what may be deemed as personal, private information. The article also has some very relevant information on how we can address and plan for change whilst protecting personal information. Note when it was written and decide if it is up to date. Is it still useful?

Now go to the Australian Computer Society (ACS) website https://www.acs.org.au and gain an understanding of what ACS does.

After gaining an understanding of the role of ACS, head to the ‘Governance’ ‘Rules and Regulations’ section of the site and review the ‘Code of Professional Conduct’ and ‘Code of Ethics’.

We, as IT professionals, have a responsibility to maintain a high standard of Professional Conduct or ethical behaviour in the workplace. We are entrusted with a large amount of control over and access to information and data of our clients. Often, we are communicating with clients who know little of our industry and we have a responsibility not to take advantage of this situation.

Part C – Ethics

The ACS (Australian Computer Society) is the Professional Association and peak body representing Australia’s ICT sector. In the previous part of the assessment, you examined the content of the ACS ‘Code of Professional Conduct’ and ‘Code of Ethics’. You may wish to refresh your understanding of this.

Answer

Introduction

The foremost determination of this paper is to focus on the importance of ICT, ethical and professional conduct, handling of personal information in a professional and ethical manner in Canva (Canva.com 2018).

Part A

Australian Legislation related to intellectual property and copyrights

The current Australian legislation which relates to the intellectual properties and copyright which state about the eligibility of a person which works for one business organization and retails the product of that organization to other organizations is stated in amendment 28 and subsection 14(1) of the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment Act. The copyright protection of the organizational assets is described in this legislation.

An Introduction to Copyright in Australia in Canva

The copyright laws of this graphics design organization are very much essential for the development of both the employees of the organization as well as for the clients of this organization as it provides incentives to invest their talent, and other resources on the business.

The copyright policies protect the textual products, television rights as well as the musical works of this graphics design organization. The concepts, styles, information and technique used in the organization is protected by the copyright policies (Joyce et al. 2016). The hacking, cracking and the decoding of the products and services of this organization is also protected from any kinds of unauthorized access.

Areas covered by copyright legislation in Canva

Template: The organizational policy applicable to this department is the one-time user license agreement. The policy is applied in the daily work when the template is used by the clients of this organization on their personal platform.

Ideas: The organizational policy applicable to this department is the multi-use license agreement. The policy can be applied in the daily activities as it would prevent any unauthorized personnel's from using the ideas developed in this organization.

Design Types: The organizational policy applicable to this department is the privacy policy which is updated on a frequent basis (Domanski et al. 2018). The privacy policy can be applied in our daily life as it helps in maintaining the integrity of the product.

Review of copyright policy and recommendations

The existing copyright policy of this organization is very much efficient and profession as the products cannot be easily decoded or extracted from the portal. It can be recommended that the copyright policy should be maintained in a mandatory database of the copyrighted works (Giddens 2015). This recommendation will be suiting the policies within the legislation and maintaining the standards of this organization.

Procedure document

Purpose: The Prime focus of this document is to focus on the copyright of the templates of this organization.

Scope: The stakeholders associated with the templates offered by the organization are their clients.

Procedure: The strategy is implemented with the help of the head project manager of this department by scheduling regular meetings with all the concerned employees of the organization.

Responsibilities: Record management is an important aspect of this organization in implementing strategies for protecting their templates.

Distribution of the revised policy

• Existing Staff: The distribution of the policy among the existing staffs can be achieved by darting the policy.
• New Staff: Training session will be helping the staffs to get used of the policies.
• Management: Effective presentations from the board of directors is effective for distributing the policies to the management.
• External Stakeholders: The revised policy can be distributed to the external stakeholders with the help of the communication process.

Part B

Overview of Canva

Canva is a graphics design organization established in the year 2012 which provides access to over a million photographs, fonts and graphics. Professionals and no professional use their products and services in a variety of fields.

Aim of the privacy policy of Canva

The privacy policy of this organization aims in protecting the products and services offered by this organization. The privacy policies of this organization are located in the portal of this organization.  

Information related to privacy information

The information regarding the privacy policy is mentioned in a specific unit of the official portal of this organization. The information is managed by the super admins of the admin panel of the board and the data are stored by the DBA (Liotou et al. 2015). The integrity of the information is maintained with the help of the privacy laws which covers all the security areas of the portals. Information of that part cannot be altered.

APPs applicable to the organization	The transparent management of information is applicable to Canva.
Organizational Policy and APPs	Maintaining the quality of personal information.
Exceeding areas	The privacy laws associated with Canva is exceeded as compared to the APPs.

Table 1: APPs and organization policy of Canva

(Source: Created by the author)

Recommendations

• The integrity and confidentiality of the products can be improved by maintaining a secured database.
• The security of the products should be improved with the help of a data security plan.

Review of the distribution policy 

The effectiveness of the policy from the stakeholders can be obtained from a directional communication platform. The recommendations can be applied in the business practice of Canva with the help of the project managers of this organization. The meeting schedules and system security can also be maintained by the project managers.

Part C

Comparison of another organizations code of ethics with the ACS Code of Ethics

Summary of the organization

ATCO is a global power generation industry located in Australia founded in the year 1947 has around 15000 employees (Atco.com.au 2018). The codes of ethics covered by this organization are as followings:

• Individual responsibilities.
• Work environment
• Use of company communication system
• Handling company information

Review and Comparison of the code with ACS Code of Ethics

The main difference between the two codes is the enhancement of quality of life and the primacy of the interest of the employees. Maintaining the work environment and professionalism are the two most preferred parts of each of the codes as both are required personal and professional growth (Swartz 2017). As an IT professional I could have worked under with these codes of ethics as these would have helped me as well as the business organization. My suggestions to the company would be to give more importance to the enhancement of the quality of life of the employees.

Creating own code of ethics

Proficiency

You will make use of your best talent to give the best within the business organization

Growth and development

You will look after personal and professional growths at the same time.

Righteousness  

You will be work honestly with morality

Multi-culture approach

You will maintain a good working environment

Fidelity

You will be committed and loyal to the organization

Distribution of the new codes

The new codes will be shared the personal accounts in the official portal of the organization.

Implementation of the new codes

The two new work practices which are needed to be introduced for implementing the new codes are autonomous work groups and decentralization of the decision making strategies (Bently and Sherman 2014). The new work practices can be implemented with the support from the external stakeholders and the management, feedbacks can be collected from official portals (Litman 2017). The compliance and monitoring of the codes can be understood with the help of weekly meeting schedules with all the concerned stakeholders.

Process Document

Purpose: The process to handle grievances is the prime purpose of this process document.

Scope: The stakeholders associated with the handling of the grievances is the Human Resource Department

Making of grievances: Grievances can be made giving special treatment to certain clients for business purposes.

Responsibilities regarding breaching of the codes: Employee relations officer will be helping to detect any confidential breaches in the ethical codes.

Handling Grievances

Steps: Setting up channels for complaints in online and offline mode and holding grievance hearings.

Resources: Both automated systems and human resources will be required for this process

Outcomes: Effectiveness of the codes can be understood.

Continuity of the codes 

Stakeholders will understand the codes with the help weekly sessions so that they can add value to it by applying them to their professional career.

Reviewing Distribution of policy

The distribution of the correct information of the codes in the organization can be identified with the help of a feedback page which will be given to all stakeholders of the business.

Reference

Atco.com.au. (2018). Code of Ethics. [online] Available at: https://www.atco.com.au/About-Us/Code-of-Ethics [Accessed 27 Nov. 2018].

Bently, L. and Sherman, B., 2014. Intellectual property law. Oxford University Press, USA.

Canva.com. (2018). Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software – Canva. [online] Available at: https://www.canva.com/ [Accessed 27 Nov. 2018].

Domanski, R., Estevez, E., Styrin, E., Alfano, M. and Harrison, T.M., 2018, May. Toward an ethics of digital government: a first discussion. In Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research: Governance in the Data Age (p. 123). ACM.

Giddens, T., 2015. Introduction. In Graphic Justice (pp. 15-21). Routledge.

Joyce, C., Ochoa, T.T., Carroll, M.W., Leaffer, M.A. and Jaszi, P., 2016. Copyright law (p. 85). Carolina Academic Press.

Liotou, E., Tsolkas, D., Passas, N. and Merakos, L., 2015. Quality of experience management in mobile cellular networks: key issues and design challenges. IEEE Communications Magazine, 53(7), pp.145-153.

Litman, J., 2017. 2017 Postscript to Digital Copyright.

Swartz, M., 2017. Digital Copyright Law.