Information Audit: Towards common standards and methodology

Abstract

This article further analyses a number of issues highlighted in a previous discussion of the current state of Information Audit (IA), and offers a graphical representation of the IA landscape. Library and Information Science (LIS) struggles to establish its ‘soft’ approach to IA as the leading methodology despite repeated endorsement by authors in other professional groups with some kind of interest in information management. They have found the LIS IA methodology using analysis of information needs and flows to be a useful analytical tool that allows them to evaluate information assets and to demonstrate compliance in asset management – whether those assets are financial, documentary or intangibles such as know-how. Since the implementation of Freedom of Information legislation, records management has espoused a strong focus on compliance and the avoidance of penalties for data protection breaches, but recent publications suggest that organizations of all kinds are adopting this finance- and accountancy-driven approach to information audit. This may be because it is seen as best able to manage the growing complexity of regulation and legislation (local, national and international) that affects information management. Forming strategic alliances with other players, the information profession must take the lead in establishing standard IA procedures and definitions drawing on its own praxis, which is widely accepted by other disciplines. There needs to be a single point of call for standardizing and accrediting IA skills, with the creation of a supporting body of knowledge whose evidence base goes beyond standard journal literature and monographs to include the now considerable corpus of unpublished theses as well as papers in languages other than English. As IA is adopted by a growing number of professional disciplines, LIS and KIM (Knowledge and Information Management) professionals – and also some finance professionals – can now find and seize opportunities beyond the boundaries of more traditional information work.

Estado del arte de la Auditoría de Información

“…Igualmente, proporciona una visión general de los beneficios que aporta su correcto uso. Griffiths (2013) ofrece una representación gráfica del panorama del tema, a través de un diagrama que muestra "islas" dentro del "mar" de AI, habitadas por los diversos grupos profesionales (llamados "tribus"), que ocupan un rol. Además, expresan que es una herramienta analítica útil que les permite evaluar los activos de información y demostrar el cumplimiento en la gestión de activos, ya sea que esos activos sean financieros, documentales o intangibles, como el know-how.…”

Asset Integrity Knowledge Management: A Case Study from the Petroleum Industry

“…The availability of good quality and reliable data is one of the major issues in the petroleum industry (Griffiths, 2012, Ouertani et al, 2008. Despite being advantageous, previous experience has also revealed that data quality could be potentially beneficial or misleading (Radhay, 2008).…”

Perceptions of Auditors in Malaysia on the Important Items of Internet Financial Reporting

“…In other words, reliability is an important issue to highlight which is not specifically subjected to the auditor himself but it concerns the frequently exposed disclosed information that have higher risk of accounting error. In addition, the main issues in the auditors environment are the role and responsibility of information on websites, the high potential of unaudited financial reporting, omission of audit report, inappropriate audit issues, and also timing, nature of the content form of the audit report on a website (Griffiths, 2012;Ismail & Sobhy, 2009;Fisher et al, 2004;Lymer & Debreceny, 2003;Xiao et al, 2002). Changes in the roles of the IFR development required auditors to report activities from paper-based to online reporting (Virginia & Michael, 2003).…”

“…In addition, the reliance of auditors on IT makes it important to set up new regulations regarding the auditing practice in IFR (Stoel et al, 2012). This can be done by setting up the standards on auditing involvement and to minimise audit issues by producing a new form of reporting by frequency and data orientation rather than information orientation (Griffiths, 2012;Ismail &Sobhy, 2009). Consequently, applying the set of regulations and law will make improvement in the auditing practice (Ohman & Wallerstedt, 2012;Stoel et al, 2012;Velmurugan, 2009).…”