1 The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2-3 September 2004 OAGs

Baltic and Nordic SAIs Vilnius 2-3 september 2004

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The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2-3 September 2004

www.riksrevisjonen.no

OAGs IT use in auditing


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OAGs IT tools in financial auditing - overview

• PROSIT

- Process-oriented IT audit tool.

- Developed by OAG.

• TOMAS

- Technical system for extraction, transforming and receiving financial data from

auditees/entities.

- Developed by OAG

• WinIDEA http://www.caseware-idea.com/

- Data analysis software

- Based on data extracted by TOMAS or received by CD

• Microsoft Office

• Microsoft Outlook

http://www.caseware-idea.com/


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General objectives of all the IT tools:

Efficient/effective audit by exploiting information technology through:

- Facilitating technical audit work

e.g. uniform and easy access to financial data, documentation of the

audit process.

- Integration of IT tools.


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• PROSIT

Objectives and characteristics:

- Supporting the audit process in all stages – uniform audit

- Guidelines/methodology are built into screens.

- Technical training of all auditors and managers

- All audit of the auditees/entities are documented in one system.

- Integrated database solution – all IT tools are supported.

- Infrastructure: Microsoft terminal server, Microsoft SQL-server,

Local Area Network in main office (Oslo) and all other offices in Norway.

- Mobile communication (Thales) – based on GSM/ISDN technology


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• TOMAS

|

Firewall

Technical Transfer and ReceivingSystem (TOMAS - which is an acronym in Norwegian)

Firewall

Firewall

Financialmanagement and

accounting systemAuditee

PC

1) Auditees

Data Collection server

3) Office of the Auditor General

4) Applications for Auditor

Wizard to select dataand generatingIDEA-compatible

data

2) Central receiving station

Transmission of dataon CD

Internet

PROSIT

Common objects

a) b)

Sybase

Oracle

SQL-server

Encrypted data

Decryption, extractingand import of data


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• TOMAS continued..

Objectives and characteristics:

- Main objective/strategic decision: Uniform/common access to financial data.

- Tomas is integrated with Prosit and WinIDEA: Easy access !

- Auditees have different accounting systems

- Historic effect: auditors were using accounting systems provided by the

auditees and the auditors needed specific knowlegde of different systems.

- Present situation: No specific knowledge of each accounting system is

needed which increase the flexibility of auditors between engagements.

- TOMAS collects financial data from auditees/data-owners and transfers data to

OAG and imports data to OAGs database. Database contains approximately 160

GigaByte collected from about 450 auditees.

- Process: Auditors have access to the data through a wizard/menu on the internet

and data are delivered by a link in the mail-system and imported automatically into IDEA

[email protected] 7


Changes & Challenges

Methodological:

2005: New methodology are implemented, based on international auditing methodologies: IFAC, COSO etc.

Technical:

• 2004/2005: Prosit are undergoing a change parallel to the methodological

development.

• 2004/2005: TOMAS are changing from importing all financial data to specific data

required by OAG.

General challenge ?

IT tools must support the need of OAG on all levels: strategic, tactical, operational and specially give an increased value to the auditing process and the goals of OAG.

Documents

1 The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2-3 September 2004 OAGs