Professionalism and ethics for GISc professionals
This article addresses professional GISc practice and the Batho Pele principles. It will discuss the role of professionalism and ethics in the interpretation of these principles.
Batho Pele is Sotho for “People First” [1]. It is political initiative introduced by the Mandela Administration which aims to provide guidelines of how public servants should conduct themselves to promote better service delivery.
The Department of Public Service and Administration (2014) defines the eight principles as follows:
- Consultation
- Service standards
- Access
- Courtesy
- Information
- Openness and transparency
- Redress
- Value for money
Professionalism and ethics
As per the definitions of professionalism, professional and profession, the conclusive meaning in the context of this study is “the competence or skill expected” of a person dually qualified in a certain occupation [2]. Ethics in turn looks at the “moral correctness of specified conduct” by a group or an individual [2].
As explained by Ngang and Chan, professionalism and ethics are considered important soft skills [3]. The competence of your applied knowledge to certain actions play a big role in how you are perceived as a professional in your relevant occupation. Ethics describes the ability to not only conduct yourself professionally, but also in an ethical manner when it comes to decision making or providing advice.
Professionalism and ethics go hand-in-hand and the reason that it is so important is that it influences the way other perceive you and your actions. This will directly influence your reputation and the level of acknowledgement your peers will have for you.
The Batho Pele principles
Consultation
In the public service consultation plays a key role within the GISc context. Without engagement with the client or service provider regarding the requirements of the data or service expected, it may lead to a product that is not satisfactory. A high level of professionalism needs to be maintained during such consultation procedures so that everyone has a chance to voice their opinion and to iron out any misunderstandings.
During consultation procedures GISc professionals need to conduct themselves ethically, especially when some of the role players do not have the same level of knowledge in your profession, since the lack of knowledge can be used to exploit the role players to agree to an inferior product or service agreement.
Service standards
In the GISc context of service standards it is important to inform and explain data capabilities and limitations to the public, since the Geomatics profession consists of terms and procedures not necessarily understood or recognised by people from other walks of life.
Ethical conduct with regards to the confidence of the associated GISc service or information needs to be maintained, as well as to honesty about the timeframes associated with certain GISc procedures or services.
Access
GISc professionals have access to an abundance of spatial data, information and services. We should conduct ourselves professionally by providing access to these services where we are aware of issues that it can help solve or mitigate.
Sound ethical conduct should guide us in terms of public data collection procedures which do not infringe on the public’s right to privacy and protection of personal information. Ethical and logical reasoning should also be applied when making decisions in terms of sharing or protecting sensitive information, such as protected species or plants in a biodiversity area.
Courtesy
Courteous and orderly engagement with the public is extremely important. This goes hand-in-hand with the consultation principle. To achieve the best results from the relevant engagements we need to behave professionally and courteously, since we might find ourselves in situation where opinions or level of knowledge in certain areas might differ.
When the public are enquiring about a service we should not only be professional and courteous in our reply and in our assistance, but we should also act ethically when suggesting another approach, method or the services of another institution to come to the solution of the issue at hand.
Information
This is possibly one of the most important principles to the geomatics profession, which also aligns with the Promotion of Access to Information Act. This principle can similarly be applied to the Spatial Data Infrastructure Act. Data in the public domain must be communicated and made available in a professional manner when requested.
Ethically we must ensure that the client understands the data they are provided with and that the most recent data is supplied. It is also important to disclose any shortcomings that we know about the dataset.
Openness and transparency
Pertaining to the GISc context and professional conduct, it is important to promote openness and transparency about the way information is collected, its limitations and the intended use of public datasets.
Professionally we should ensure that sensitive data is handled in such a way that transparency is promoted without putting valuable information, people or assets at risk. There is also an ethical component to consider when collecting data from the public to protect their right to privacy and personal information.
Redress
Any inconsistencies in GISc spatial data and information or services needs to be redressed in a professional manner. This will include explaining the identified issue, how it happened and how it was solved.
Ethically it is important to make the public aware of an issue on a GISc dataset or service when you become aware of it. Redress should also be fast and efficient.
Furthermore, GISc professionals are usually part of teams conducting development and service delivery planning. These teams are usually faced with the challenge of the spatial imbalances of the Apartheid-era’s planning. Professional and ethical conduct should also be exercised during these planning procedures to overcome the challenges we are facing today because of imbalanced planning of the past.
Value for money
In the GISc context “value for money” is a difficult aspect. It is most of the times difficult to justify the spending on spatial data projects beforehand, where the value of the data is only realised later.
Therefore, professional conduct will a go a long way in determining whether a project will be a good value for money investment. A lot of thought and research of previous example needs to done and the possibilities of what can be done with the data needs to communicated and explained professionally to the other role players.
It should also follow ethical reasoning of whether the spend for the spatial data is more important than certain service delivery that needs to take place.
Conclusion
As geomatics professionals, not just in the public sector, we should recognise and continue to pursue the importance of professionalism and ethical conduct to keep the integrity of our work and our profession intact. Emphasis should be placed on every situation, even outside of work, to ensure that the behaviour meets the associated professional and ethical conduct of the South African Geomatics Council.
References
[1] DPSA. 2014. The Batho Pele Vision: A better life for all South Africans by putting people first [Online]. Pretoria. Available: http://www.dpsa.gov.za/documents/Abridged%20BP%20programme%20July2014.pdf [Accessed 15 October 2018].
[2] Professionalism; Ethics. 2010. Oxford dictionary of English, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 3rd ed.
[3] TK Ngang and TC Chan. 2015. The Importance of Ethics, Moral and Professional Skills of Novice Teachers. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 205, 8-12.
Contact Mattheus Human, GISc Technologist, tewie.human@gmail.com
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