Professionalism

1. Professionalism 2010/2011

3. �When a used car salesman tells you, �This is the car for you,� you fully expect the salesman to be motivated primarily by self-interest: he wants to sell you the car to put a few dollars in his pocket.� Example

4. �But when an audiologist tells you, �This is the hearing aid for you,� you assume that recommendation stems from the audiologist�s independent judgment that this particular hearing aid would be best for you.� Example

5. �The used car salesman is a businessman; the audiologist is a �professional.� Professionals distinguish themselves from �mere� businessmen or tradesman by holding themselves to a higher standard than self-interest.� �Because professionals �profess� to hold the client�s or patient�s interest paramount, clients or patients seek out professionals and repose their confidence in them in order to find the added measure of safety and comfort inherent in such relationships.� Reasons

6. Doctors Dentists Veterinarians Pharmacists Lawyers Accountants Architects Journalists Engineers �� etc. Stock Brokers PROFESSIONALS

7. Professionalism What is Your Definition?

8. One Possible Definition �To me, the essence of professionalism is a commitment to develop one�s skills to the fullest and to apply [them] responsibly to the problems at hand. Professionalism requires adherence to the highest ethical standards of conduct and a willingness to subordinate narrow self-interest in pursuit of the more fundamental goal of public service.� Justice Sandra Day O�Connor � US Supreme Court

9. Professionalism - Characteristics Professionalism is an aspirational standard, the essential elements of which are Competence Personal integrity, responsibility and accountability Public obligation

10. Professionalism - Characteristics Competence Relevant, up-to-date skills and capabilities appropriate to the particular task Including appropriate non-technical competences -communication, business, leadership and management competences A broader foundation of relevant experience, knowledge and understanding Supported with relevant qualifications Maintained through Continuous Professional Development

11. Professionalism - Characteristics Integrity A clear commitment to abide by a code of ethics which is recognised and administered by the professional community Responsibility and accountability A set of personal obligations and responsibilities which sit alongside the contractual obligation to an employer or client. A matching accountability which is also separate from that of an employer

12. Professionalism - Characteristics Public Obligation Regard for and contribution to the public good - protect the public interest Social responsibility Commitment and contribution to the professional community and support from that community

13. The Making of A Professional

14. Computing relatively young and evolving diverse and complex not organised around a domain of life, only on technology like engineering, computing activities help us to achieve other goods such as health, safety, efficiency and communication etc. is Computing a profession?

15. Why Professionalism for IT often the context of the situation puts computing professionals into morally/ethically significant positions, especially in area of Software Engineering! bad Software Engineering has caused and increasingly has the potential to cause a lot of damage too! The London Ambulance Service The Therac-25

16. London Ambulance Service Background The LAS Dispatch system is responsible for: Receiving calls Dispatching ambulances based on nature of call and availability of resources Monitoring progress of the response to the call 65% of ambulances reached destinations in 15 mins In October 1992, the manual dispatch system was to be replaced by a computer aided, highly automated system to better manage the available resources

17. London Ambulance Service What happened? Under load, the system could not keep track of vehicles and their status, calls were put on hold for 30 mins or lost Flawed user interface, operator not able to scroll through list of pending calls. Hence scarce resources were deployed sub-optimally Overall failure to meet demand, leading to a huge backlog System effectively collapsed: Ambulance arrived late to find that patient was dead and had been taken away by undertakers Ambulance answered stroke call after 11 hours, patient already in hospital for 5 hours Only 20% of ambulances reached destinations within 15 mins

18. London Ambulance Service Why? Problems at many levels, including the broad political context�. But bad project management and bad software engineering at the core, including: Incomplete and effectively untested software codes �high risk� implementation approach Inappropriate and unjustified assumptions in the specifications Lack of consultation with users and clients No backup procedure

19. Therac-25 Background Therac-25: a computer-controlled radiation therapy machine Dual mode X-ray and electron beam therapy Follow-on from earlier computer assisted machines Therac-6 and Therac-20 In particular, industry standard hardware safety interlock mechanism Migrated to software control, especially for all safety interlocks features

20. Therac-25 What happened? Between June 1985 and January 1987, six patients massively overdosed (in some cases by a factor of 100) All were seriously injured or died: one within three weeks of the accident Have been described as �the worst accidents in the history of medical accelerators�

21. Therac-25 Why? Decision not to �duplicate� software safety mechanisms in hardware Reuse of faulty software module from the earlier machines, where the fact that they were faulty was not critical (even unknown?) because of the hardware safety features Equipment control task was not properly synchronised with the operator interface task, leading to race conditions if the operator changed the setup too quickly

22. Therac-25 Why? Deeply flawed concurrent programming practice: concurrent access to shared memory without proper locking mechanism The software set a flag variable by incrementing it. Occasionally an arithmetic overflow occurred, causing software to bypass safety checks

23. Other Examples and Complex Applications stock market crash of 1987 caused partly by programmed selling software error of flight control system of the F-16 jet fighter caused it to fly upside down on crossing the equator 290 civilians were killed when the US warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner due to fault in Aegis radar system, designed to accurately classify 20 target types nuclear plant control, missile shield, air traffic control etc�.

24. ACM - IEEE DPMA IFIP CIPS BIPS etc� Computing Codes Of Ethics

25. Professional Codes of Ethics When you join the ACM or IEEE you implicitly agree to be bounded by their rules.

26. A Broader Definition (Idealistic) A set of internalized character strengths and values directed toward high quality specialized service to others through one�s work Meticulous adherence to undeviating courtesy, honesty, and responsibility in one's dealings with customers and associates, plus a level of excellence that goes over and above the commercial considerations and legal requirements. something to do with attitudes!

27. Discussions can professionalism be achieved without code of ethics? how does professionalism apply to a university setting?

28. Acknowledgements Materials adapted from: http://philosophy.tamu.edu/~gary/phil482/POWERPOINT.Poston.Professionalism-NO-PICTURES.ppt http://convention.asha.org/2006/handouts/855_0417Roberts_Richard_A._071798_121506122626.ppt http://www.ifip.or.at/projects/IFIP%20Plenary%20-%20Professionalism.pdf http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~nhn/G52GRP/LectureNotes/ lecture05-4up.pdf web.njit.edu/~mcbenton/teaching2/cis350/videos/ppt/week_04--cis350--professional_ethics.ppt