The design of co-audit: An experimental testbed system to support research on the next generation of audit technology

Abstract

Abstract Accounting practitioners responsible for conducting audits of large, decentralized organizations face difficult issues including: (1) the decomposition of the auditing process in a manner conducive to organizations' decentralization strategies in such a way as to meet the level of global audit assurance that is required, (2) allocating audit specialists with appropriate levels of experience and knowledge to organizations' sites, and (3) synthesizing specialists' findings to achieve a global vantage point for rendering a comprehensive opinion. This paper addresses item three by describing the design of and our current progress in implementing CO-AUDIT, an experimental testbed system to enable various research agendas in support of developing the next generation of audit technology. As currently implemented the system provides an environment for investigating the sharability of knowledge and data, variables influencing group decision making, consensus building tools, structured auditing approaches, and communication between accounting practitioners engaged in the process of auditing large, decentralized organizations. In addition to addressing these aspects, CO-AUDIT has been designed to be sufficiently robust to facilitate inclusion of existing auditing-oriented knowledge based system applications. CO-AUDIT can be referred to as an experimental testbed system, developed to serve as a platform for facilitating future audit technology research.