Ethical concerns about FBI’s authorized and influential power have never been quiet down and have become even more controversial after 2001. Under the Patriot Act put into place after the September 11 attacks, FBI has gained more and broader influences on the surveillances of potential criminals and terrorists to enforce the country’s security.

Both FBI and the US citizens are in ethical dilemmas for this issue because the trade offs between national security and individual privacy is never easy to obtain. It is indispensable for FBI to monitor information flow of potential terrorists or criminals, but under current limitations, their activities fail to fulfill their responsibility while satisfy the public’s needs for privacy. For the U.S. citizens, while they realize the necessity of FBI’s actions to enforce their security, they are also concerned in problems such as over surveillance and intentional or unintentional misuse of its power to intrude individual privacy. Their conflicts mainly come from the trade off between and different evaluations of security and privacy and this is worsened by some of FBI’s failure or scandals, either technically or politically. And the use of electronic surveillance and national security letter are the two issues been brought to attention.

There are various options to deal with the dilemma. One feasible option is to require changes in law to limit FBI’s power on certain actions but this could lead to the loose of national security. Another possible option is to make FBI’s work more transparent to at least the top officers in the federal government which would lower the risk of misusing but may result in inflexibility and over intervenes from the top. Other options include internal improvement of FBI’s working procedures and methods, trying to balance the two sides. In practical, a combination of the options mentioned above from both internal and external perspectives to make FBI’s job more acceptable may be a proper solution.

Ethical and social impacts of the use of modern technology could be significant. Even when it comes to pivotal domain like national security, citizens’ are still concerned of their privacy. Thus for IS managers, it is important to carefully evaluate the ripple effects of IT and perform the ethical principles to be ethically and morally right when adopting technologies.

Newly developed knowledge management (KM) tools based on Web2.0 are now available and may become a reasonable choice. They adopted ideas like blog, RSS to encourage and foster knowledge sharing, without additional work and much money. In contrast, “traditional” KM tools failed to be widely applied because of its high cost, complexity, and unfriendly user interface.

EMS Documentum is a large set of software which helps manage all kinds of content across multiple departments within a unified platform. Through various software under the same platform, it enables enterprises to manage and share content within organizations and with outsiders. Tangible costs includes large amount of funds to buy the software from EMS and additional IT hardware, maintenance and technical support will be required. Intangible costs consist of efforts on employee persuasion and training on the new system, and long term incentive to encourage knowledge sharing. Although expensive, complicated and not user friendly, the Documentum system is now well established and has been adopted and tested by many large enterprises. EMS also gets a whole basket of services and solutions to help address problems, as long as you have enough money. The newly developed “KM 2.0” tools are web-based, inexpensive and more user-involved because of its Web2.0 features. But they are new and therefore lack of further testing which may lead to privacy, security pitfalls.

The decision on adopting a KM system should be consistent with the business needs. A KM system may contribute to knowledge sharing but it should be people-centric and more attention should be put on the business strategy and the corporate culture. Several factors would be addressed when evaluating the two kinds of KM systems. Whether and to what extent a KM system contributes to the organization’s comparative advantages should be first evaluated. Then whether we have enough funds to buy the Documentum system and related services is important. Further, whether the corporate culture encourages knowledge sharing should be considered because if not, the adoption of a Documentum system would require much political efforts and incentives to get employees on board and then a KM2.0 system is more attractive because of its grass root features.

The biggest challenge of KM initiative is to get employees engaged in knowledge sharing. It requires clear incentives and rewards. Employees need to feel beneficial from the process. T-shaped managers can be adopted to foster collaboration and interactions among different units to further assure successful KM.

Implementing a new enterprise-wide system maybe beneficial but risky as well. More attention on strategy and immense efforts aligning the enterprise resources are needed, to smoothly develop and implement the new system to leverage its benefits.

NIBCO adopted Application Packages from a vendor as its ISD approach. Generally speaking, since the vendor provides the complete set of applications which might have been existed and used for similar problems elsewhere, if the system is installed properly, companies can save time and win substantial payback. However, the disadvantages are also significant. Risks of failure or delaying or beyond budget are high because of the system’s large size and complexity. Companies may have to compromise and change their way of doing business to balance with the new system. There are also problems like vendor switch, lack of intimate knowledge of the system, etc. In initiation, large numbers of business men were involved and 14 months were spent, all in the purpose of identifying the core business processes and problems. SAP trainings were conducted to make team members familiar with the system. Incentive pay bonus and stock options were granted to encourage the team members to work hard and quickly. In development and implementation, business teams, IS department and Change Management cooperated closely to customize the system, build IT infrastructure, and improve communication within the organization. Long hours of training to the employees were delivered. Budget was carefully evaluated throughout the process.

In order to implement quickly to satisfy business demand and avoid suspending without fully applying the systems, NIBCO chose the big bang approach. The challenge was that since they would convert to the new system all in one shot, they need to quickly address and fix problems emerged and help the staff run the systems smoothly. The Go Live date was set shortly before the New Year’s holiday, which would allow more flexibility and time for adjustment. New tactical teams were formed to handle heading up risky areas such as data, customization, helpdesk, etc. Critical success factors: Senior management’s consensus and support; close alignment of business and IT; proper champion involved.

Recommendations: Carefully evaluate whether to reinvent or not; consider whether they can devote sufficient resources and accept the opportunity cost during the implementation; a team of closely cooperated business people, IS staff and proper champion should be formed; prepare to modify organizational structure to accommodate the new system.