Measuring sustainability for an effective Information System audit from public organization perspective

Abstract

Information System (IS) auditing is the assessment of various controls, risk, and system development within IS infrastructures. Incorporation of sustainability within the existing audit process aims to enhance the execution of the IS audit for an effective information system. Commonly, the performance of an IS service is evaluated through quantitative scales such as Likert Scale. However, such measurement does not provide an accurate value of the audit context due to lack of precision. Our work attempts to address this limitation. In particular, we propose a Sustainability-driven Information System Audit (SISA) approach that integrates Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Fuzzy Set Theory (FST) to determine the performance of sustainability in IS focusing on the public organization. Sustainability consists of five dimensions as audit criteria, i.e., economic, environmental, resources, social and technology. These audit criteria are also contain sub-criteria such as cost, green IS…etc. In our case, the AHP is used to identify the relevance importance of the sustainability dimensions and its related attributes so that we can prioritize the relevant audit areas. The priority is then used to determine the level of the satisfactory of the IS sustainability using the FST. Finally, we provide a case study from the National Audit Department of Malaysia to demonstrate the applicability of our approach. The results show that this approach is useful for an effective audit towards sustainability, where auditors are able to produce effective justification for IS audit findings.