The Office of the Auditor General of Norway

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 1

The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2 -3 September 2004 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 • Win. IDEA http: //www. caseware-idea. com/ - Data analysis software - Based on data extracted by TOMAS or received by CD • Microsoft Office • Microsoft Outlook 2

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

The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2 -3 September 2004 • 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 4

The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2 -3 September 2004 • TOMAS 5

The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2 -3 September 2004 • TOMAS continued. . Objectives and characteristics: - Main objective/strategic decision: Uniform/common access to financial data. - Tomas is integrated with Prosit and Win. IDEA: 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 Giga. Byte 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 6

The Office of the Auditor General of Norway - OAG Annual meeting of the Baltic and Nordic SAIs, Vilnius 2 -3 September 2004 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. tore. nilsen@riksrevisjonen. no 7