5: Techno-societal Challenges and Actions for Practitioners

This chapter is the second of three audience-specific chapters, and it is focused on practitioners. For context, this chapter is underpinned by the definition of an information technology (IT) practitioner as stated by the Chartered Institute of IT,

This chapter moves the discourse from Chapter 2 forward to situate the challenges that practitioners face in a techno-society. At the end of the chapter, we will suggest some actions for the consideration of a practitioner. Being aware of the challenges affecting clients is important to make relevant decision for risk mitigation and increase confidence in technology-related decision-making.

The chapter has six sections: terminology that we think will be useful to be aware for discourse, identification of business models and operations that technology can impact, the disconnect between technology solution functionality and the objectives needs of SMEs, the processes available for data security and cybersecurity, and how people within organisations respond, use and experience technology as part of their role.