（2006）Towards Online Auditing. The database environment.docVIP

Towards Online Auditing. The database environment Stefan Popa, Claudia Ionescu Romanian Court of Accounts 011948 Bucharest 1, Romania Str. Lev Tolstoi Nr. 22-24 Abstract. This paper gives an overview of recent evolutions in the field of audit, induced by the advances to the network economy and to the information society. A new form of audit, the online auditing is emmerging and it can be defined as auditing through a database. The paper describes the main features of this online auditing, together with some considerations concerning its feasibility. Key words. Online audit; systems interoperability; data integration; auditing through a database. Introduction The emmerging information society, characterized by integration, automation of processes and controls, increased reliability of (and dependence on) systems is also accompanied by an increased need for accurate and timely information. This creates the need for new approaches in audit procedures and auditing architectures, especially in the large–scale socio–economic systems, such as those in financial and related fields or the so called ”e”-systems covering social and technical systems as well (e-governance, e-commerce, e–learning, e-health and so on). To state it concisely, an important side effect (as observed elsewhere, see for example, Eurosai – IT WG), is the fact that the intangible nature of automated systems and the associated technical intricacies raised considerably the complexity of the related audits. The audit institution and the audit institutions too have to adapt in the best possible way to the present high–degree automation in all fields by taking into account and integrating the information technologies (IT) and the related issues in all audits and in the functioning of the audit institutions. The major challenge is to redesign the auditing architectures (as we will show later on in this paper), but a general challenge for every SAI is to strengthen the capacity to meet its strategic goals th