Regulation in the ICT Industry

After the plenary sessions, the ACS Canberra Branch conference shifted gears, with parallel sessions about the nature of the IT industry and profession. Richard Lucas talked about research conducted into the views of ICT people about the profession, regulation and ethics. One issue was that there are so many groups involved in the ICT industry that there was not a level of regulation as might apply in other professions. The Government was not seen to be the way to regulate the industry, with ICT people wary of such control.

Richard presented a relatively bleak picture, with little recognition of professionalism and little obvious enforcement of ethical standards. However, Richard mentioned they are working on ways to help ICT professionals do the right thing, rather than externally forcing them to.

Previous research in the area is in the ACS's magazine: Ethics survey: haste sours quality in ICT (Richard Lucas, Information Age, 17/06/2007).

After lunch Ann Steward, Australian Government Chief Information Officer, is talking about ICT in the government sector.