Code of Conduct for ACIOA members shall be designated by Council’s advice under approval of the Board of the Executive of Director. The following is examples Code of Conduct suggested standards of recommended practice relating to information technology (IT) or information and communications technology (ICT). These base much of The Institute of IT Professionals (IITP) of New Zealand and the IITP Code of Practice on the British Computer Society Code of Good Practice. In this regard, prior to official use of the following code of conduct, it is advisable to ask for official approval from those two institutes.
ACIOA recommended Code of Conduct to the members are as followings:-
- Member shall be aware of practice under any conflict of interest.
- Identify and avoid or mitigate any conflict of interest before entering employment or beginning a project or other job.
- Be prepared to disclose any real, potential or perceived conflict of interest to affected parties. Note that a perceived conflict may not be initially identifiable.
- Be aware that a perceived conflict of interest, though possibly not actual, can still affect relationships and interactions and so must be afforded as much attention as any other conflict.
- Actively seek to remedy any discovered conflict of interest identified at any stage in a job or project life cycle. Remedies include: removing the cause of the conflict (which may include removing yourself from the conflict), not taking part in any decision-making which is affected by the conflict, involving someone else on your behalf who is not compromised and so on.
- Report any real, potential or perceived conflict of interest to your superiors, management, board, committee or any appropriate entity or entities.
- Be prepared to work with those who are or might be affected by any real, potential or perceived conflict of interest at any time.
- Member shall maintain your competence.
- Seek to improve your IT skills by attending relevant internal courses, external courses, using computer-based training or reading technical publications.
- While striving to put newly learned skills into practice, be cautious of attempting anything which you are not qualified to do; inform your management if so requested and only proceed if your management accepts the consequences.
- Keep up to date with technological advances, through training, technical publications and specialist groups within professional bodies; recognize that information gained from the Internet may not be validated.
- Attain appropriate qualifications.
- Actively participate in specialist bodies such as the IITP Specialist Groups.
- Commit to a continuing professional development (CPD) program and seek further contemporary education and training on IT and related matters.
- Member shall adhere to regulations.
- Follow the standards relevant to the client organization’s business, technology and development methods; encouraging new standards, where appropriate standards do not exist.
- Use standards in an intelligent and effective manner to achieve well-engineered results.
- Keep up to date with new standards and promote their adoption by the organization when they are sufficiently mature and can offer real benefit to the organization. Keep up to date with internal and external regulations and promote their adoption by the organization if of benefit to the organization or if necessary to sustain the public good.
- Ensure that you are up to date with the substance and content of the legal and regulatory frameworks (including but not restricted to data protection, health and safety, copyright geographical and industrial) as well as Codes and Standards that apply to your work; act at all times in a manner that gives full effect to your obligations under such legal and regulatory frameworks and encourage your colleagues to do likewise.
- Seek professional advice at an early stage if you have any doubts about the appropriate application of the law or regulations.
- Concern yourself with the needs of people with, for example, visual impairments, dyslexia or physical disabilities Comply with non-discriminatory legislation in the areas of race, color, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability or age in all aspects of your work.
- Member shall act professionally as a specialist.
- Maintain your knowledge of your specialism at the highest level by, for example, reading relevant literature, attending conferences and seminars, meeting and maintaining contact with other leading practitioners and through taking an active part in appropriate learned, professional and trade bodies.
- Evaluate new products, assess their potential benefit and recommend their use where appropriate.
- Keep in close touch with and contribute to current developments in the specialism, particularly within the organization and your own industry.
- When competent, offer expert advice, both reactively and pro-actively, to those engaged in activities where the specialism is applicable; this includes budgetary and financial planning, litigation, legislation and health and safety.
- Understand the boundaries of your specialist knowledge; admit when you may be required to cross this boundary and seek advice from colleagues with the necessary expertise; do not make misleading claims about your expertise.
- Exercise a sense of social responsibility for the implications of your work.
- Consider ways to inform colleagues of advances in technology, circulating documents, setting up libraries and arranging discussion groups where appropriate.
- Be aware that people within the organisation may not share your expertise; avoid technical jargon and express yourself clearly in terms they understand.
- Be aware of the risks and liabilities resulting from giving incorrect advice; consider taking out professional indemnity insurance.
- Member shall use appropriate methods and tools.
- Keep up to date with new methods and the tools to support these methods
- Promote the effective use of methods and tools within the organization.
- Recommend the adoption of new methods only when they have been demonstrated to be effective for the organization and are, preferably, supported by suitable tools.
- Explain to non-IT staff the purpose of any methods that have impact on their duties, so that they can understand the outputs and appreciate the benefits.
- Recognize the scope and applicability of methods and resist any pressure to use inappropriate methods.
- Member shall manage your workload efficiently.
- Report any overruns to budget or timescales as they become apparent; do not assume that you will be able to recover them later.
- Where applicable, such as working for a client, ensure that your work is covered by Terms of Reference and be wary of exceeding them.
- Do not undertake, or commit to, more assignments than you can reasonably expect to meet in a given time.
- Ensure that you have the necessary resources to complete assignments within agreed time scales.
- Member shall participate maturely.
- Provide constructive criticism of colleagues’ work, aiming to improve the quality of the work without belittling your colleagues.
- Accept constructive criticism of your work, appreciating that your colleagues may have better solutions.
- Maintain good working relationships with colleagues, clients and users, even if you may strongly disagree with them; however, ensure that such disagreements are recorded.
- Ensure that the views of all participants are taken into the account and are fairly represented in the resulting list of actions.
- Follow up all actions placed on yourself, even in cases where you do not entirely agree with them.
- Utilize technical reviews as an aid to your professional judgment, seeking specialist advice where appropriate.
- Member shall respect the interests of your clients and colleagues.
- Declare any personal gains, financial or otherwise, that you may make from any proposed work; do not falsify or conceal information for your own benefit.
- Accept only those assignments which you are qualified and competent to undertake; you have a particular responsibility when you consider an assignment to be of questionable value to your client.
- Safeguard the confidentiality of all information concerning your clients.
- Refrain from acting for several clients with competing or conflicting interests without prior agreement from all parties.
- Utilize professional judgment and act with professional objectivity and independence at all times; in this respect “independence” is taken to mean “independence of relationships which might be taken to impair objectivity”.
- Inform clients immediately of any interests or change of circumstances, which might prejudice the objectivity of the advice given.
- Disclose any interests in products which you may recommend to your client.
- Do not disclose to any third party any confidential information about your clients or its competitors.
- Member shall promote good practices within the organization.
- Document all work to a level of detail that others could take over your work if need be.
- Identify opportunities for increasing the awareness of IT throughout the organization.
- Be aware of the interaction of your work with that of others involved in the same activity.
- Seek to identify potential hazards, failures and risks associated with your work or work place, and seek to ensure that they are appropriately addressed.
- Ensure that those working under your supervision or direction are competent, that they are made aware of their responsibilities and they accept personal responsibility for the work delegated to them.
- Help to promote a culture within the organization which strives for continuous improvement; seek involvement and participation in best practices at all levels.
- When problems arise, take responsible corrective actions, even when such actions are beyond your responsibility.
- Take every opportunity to contribute to formal quality management systems within the organization and fully understand quality and commercial practices.
- Contribute positively to the fulfillment of the overall QA function of the organization where the function exists.
- Consider the introduction and promotion of QA functions where they do not exist, are relevant and are within your competence.
- Otherwise, consider the promotion of QA functions by competent third parties where the functions do not exist and are relevant.
- Ensure the organization’s practices on the collection and use of personal data comply with applicable national, regional and international laws and (self) regulatory schemes.
- Accept the blame for your own faults, rather than transferring the blame onto items for which you are not responsible.
- Member shall represent the profession to the public.
- Contribute to the education of the public whenever you have the opportunity, so that they can be aware of and form an objective and informed view on IT issues.
- Ensure that all complaints from members of the public are dealt with properly through to resolution; such complaints include, but are not restricted, to accessibility, data protection and data security issues.
- Encourage user and consumer trust in reputable and proven global networks and electronic commerce or their descendant, relevant technologies.
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