Introduction
Information is an important resource because it facilitates informed decision-making. It is advisable for decision makers to seek for the necessary information prior to making any decision. The reason for this is to gather facts, analyze various dimensions of a situation, and make a sound decision. This work is a presentation of a case study on emergency management at the millennium. The city is experiencing a management problem in the information and technology department.
There is an increase in the load of information to be stored and processed due to the increase in the city’s total population. The information and technology management team has no appropriate managerial and technical skills to guide the department toward meeting the rising information needs. Issues to be discussed are the organizational context of the case, the options available to the decision makers and the necessary ethical framework for decision-making.
Organizational/ political context
An organization is a group of individuals who have been brought together under a certain code of conduct and performance to work toward achieving a common goal. Every organization has a management team and a structure that indicates the chain of command. Each member of an organization is entitled to a role and authority to use the organization’s resources to facilitate task completion.
The CIO is at the top of the organization structure meaning that s/he exercises all the powers and authorities of the department and controls the department’s resources toward ensuring that the organization’s goal- meeting information requirements and needs of various departments in the city- are met.
It is important to note that the information technology department is an organization inside another organization headed by the city manager. The city manager is responsible for the developmental needs of the city. Therefore, the complete organizational structure would be the City manager the CIO the staff. Whereby, a chain of command flows downward from the city manager (Rhodes, 2002).
Options to the decision maker
Beginning from the top, to ensure that the city’s development plans run according to the plan, the city manager could decide to disband the falling Information and technology department and allow all the other departments to establish their own in compliance with their needs. This decision would help reduce the amount of data to be stored and processed by each department. The second option is to fire the incumbent chief information officer and hire a new one.
This option would help find the right manager with appropriate managerial and technical skills to deliver information needs of various users in the city. The third option would be to let the incumbent CIO to continue serving but hire an assistant CIO with the requisite qualifications. The second decision maker would be the Chief information officer. He should create a working environment suitable for the staff members thus reduce employee turnover (Rhodes, 2002).
Framework for ethical decision-making
While performing every duty or making an important decision, there are some guides and regulations or to be precise, codes of conduct that an individual is expected to display. The ethical framework proposed to guide the city manager when hiring a new chief information officer should be exercising impartial judgment based on professionalism and skills of the candidate and show no favoritism whatsoever, for a particular gender or race (Rhodes, 2002).
Reference
Rhodes, T. L. (2002). The public manager case book: Making decisions in a complex world. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.