IT morals and ethics

[ochadd]

A few facts to start things off.

You are the highest IT authority of an organization. The organization's business is not technology related. Office machines are in use at most 12 hours of every day. Any additional service could potentially bring vulnerabilities and/or liabilities in that could be avoided.

Many opportunities over the years have been left by the way side as I've seen them as a conflict of interest or personal issues.

Distributed computing projects such as SETI and Folding@Home have been an active interest of mine for many years. I've run them at home and used them for burn in on servers and benchmarking. How should the permanent use of these type of applications be viewed by executive management?

If I'm responsible for managing IT resources would this be something that could be decided independant of executive management? I've long avoided even asking the question for fear my superiors would suspect me of abusing my position.

Along those same lines, a bit more of a reach, are game, file, voice, and application servers for public and private use. There are so many unused resources in both CPU cycles and internet bandwidth during off-hours that these things would go unnoticed outside of IT. More wishful projects that I don't view as morally or ethically correct.

If a rank and file employee asked me for to set something up for their personal use I'd have to refuse. They would need privledged access or my staff would need to devote time to set these up. By my maintaining them the cost becomes extra electricity and potential vulnerabilities of software that may not be critical to business operation.

Any thoughts?

 

[Cogman]

What are you asking/trying to discuss? You start off listing a few facts and then I just can't follow your train of thought.

If you are asking "Is it all right to use company equipment for personal stuff if I am the head honcho of the IT department" The answer is no. even if it is a good cause or whatever, if senior management doesn't approve it then it is unethical to try and use it behind their backs.

Its like saying "I am head of the vehicles in the company, so when I drive to work related places it is ok for me to stop on the way to get groceries ect, because if I didn't it would just be a waist of gas two make to trips to run my personal errands." that isn't right either. The machines belong to the company and as such it is the owners of the companies responsibility to decide how they should be used, your responsibility as an IT guy is to make sure what they want is getting done and fixing things that go wrong (potentially making suggestions as well).

 

[PolymerTim]

I think there's nothing wrong with making a suggestion as long as it is reasonable, but I completely agree with Cogman that you do not own the hardware and therefor can not use it for anything that is not approved by the owners. The hired you to manage it for them, but not to decide what it should be used for.

I think, if you feel there is a worthy use, you should prepare a little proposal to the management. Basically say what you just said above something along the lines of being a better corporate citizen and contributing to the advancement of critical science. Basically I see it very similar to donating to a charity, except that you are asking the company execs to donate. You have to be fair and prepare a complete summary of costs and risks involved such as cost of increased electricity useage (not insignificant), possibly increased cost for air conditioning (depending on the density of computers), and increased risk of hardware failure.

I figure its probably a long shot, but only you know if the execs might be interested. Maybe you should write up the proposal and then make an educated guess if you think they would be open to the idea. My guess is that you might have a small chance with something critical like cancer research, but I think suggesting a game server would be a bit foolish.

 

[CycloWizard]

I agree with the other guys. You're increasing the load on the computers by running a distributed computing program on the systems, which costs the company money (shorter hardware lifetimes, extra power consumption). This effect is probably small, but it's still something that they should be made aware of and asked before you go ahead with it.

 

[BrownTown]

Running computers 24/7 will use alot more electricity, and also shorten hardware life. So, it is certainly VERY unethical to use them with out authorization (just the same as if you were taking supplies from the company and using them for personal use). And I just have to doubt that any sort of management is going to want their computers running and burning hundreds of watts of power each when they could all be shut down.

 

[hellokeith]

Make the suggestion to executive management that desktops only (no laptops/portables) could be used a few hours (like ~3) in the evening/night for distributed computing. Pick only projects that are going to get universal approval/sympathy, like Folding@Home (SETI will get you laughed out of the meeting). Sell this as a donation/good-will resource that your company can claim (we devote x hours per month in IT resources for the cure to cancer).

Any of the other uses like a game server you mentioned are right out.

 

[oynaz]

If I am not mistaken, folding@home will help cure Alheimer's, not cancer. Apart from that, I agree with you guys.

 

[PolymerTim]

Originally posted by: oynaz
If I am not mistaken, folding@home will help cure Alheimer's, not cancer. Apart from that, I agree with you guys.

Actually, folding@home covers a variety of research on protein folding that has to do with many kinds of diseases including Alzheimer's and cancers. Here's an excerpt from their home page:

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

I do believe the majority of recent work (since 2006) focuses on Alzheimer's and Hunntington's diseases, but much of the knowledge is applicable to the entire realm of protein folding, or at the very least advances the science of protein folding to develop tools to better study other applications.

Edit: Just found an excellent page on the folding@home website that goes into more detail on exactly what problems they have/are studying and when:
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/FAQ-Diseases

 

[oynaz]

OK, thanks for enlightening me