Computer Ethics Awareness

Abstract

In today’s global economy, information awareness is an essential component of any management of information system. Furthermore, the importance of information awareness is even more vital in universities. Like other organizations, universities provide users with access to a huge amount of information and resources. As such, it is very important for employees and students to be aware of ethical issues associated with the usage of these information resources. Lack of an effective code of conduct and policies forces us to address the field of computer ethics and think about new ways to solve the problems of the presented issues.

This research addresses some of the most important and controversial issues including ethical and legal matters such as computer crime, computer sabotage, hacking, privacy, intellectual property, copyright and software piracy.

This research investigates the ethical awareness of computer use in the West Campus of Sudan University of Science and Technology (SUST). The study attempts to find the differences between males and females in their ethical judgments and the factors that affect their ethical judgments. A questionnaire based on the ten codes of ethics and consisting of 20 questions was distributed to the study participants, which consisted of the employee’s computer based in the West Campus of SUST. 102 volunteers participated in the survey (response rate 85%).

The results show that the majority of the respondents were highly aware of computer ethics. Males have more awareness of the code of ethics than females. The factor that affected males was the religious factor, while the factors that affected females in their ethical judgments were religious factors, professional environment and moral obligation. The results of this study can be applied on SUST and other universities, organizations and institutions, which help them on constructing their own code of ethics and policies.