An intranet success story: auditors at a large financial services organization discover the power of intra-enterprise connectivity

Internal Auditor,  June, 2004  by Antonio Carlos Correia,  Eder Luiz Menezes De Faria

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DETERMINE FUNCTIONALITY REQUIREMENTS Some corporate intranets provide a broad range of applications, including messaging software, collaboration tools, publishing features, and imaging software. Deploying these tools requires multiple applications and servers and substantial monetary investment. Choose functionalities that can deliver immediate, tangible benefits. Especially if the audit department has a limited budget and may not have an information technology department to attend to user requests immediately, keep the site as streamlined as possible. To minimize costs and simplify development, for example, initial functionality goals could be limited to facilitating intra-department collaboration and information sharing.

USE INDUSTRY STANDARDS Which browsers will intranet users employ? What database programs are they using? What type of server operating system will be used? Is the information technology (IT) infrastructure heterogeneous? Whenever possible, developers should use standards-based technologies, as opposed to proprietary solutions, to ensure maximum compatibility across the system. The W3C Consortium, a global network of organizations dedicated to developing Web standards [www.w3.org], provides guidance on HTML, extensible markup language, cascading style sheets, and other Web programming tools. Following W3C's guidelines can help ensure programming codes will work with almost any type of browser. In addition, developers should construct SQL queries and create tables and views according to American National Standards Institute [www.ansi.org] specifications, which will ensure compatibility with almost any type of database system.

DETERMINE RESOURCES NEEDED FOR SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT If the department has already determined its system requirements and goals for the intranet, all specifications can be delivered to either the IT department or an outside provider for development and implementation. However, if the department has not defined its requirements and still has many unanswered questions regarding how the intranet will be used, consider establishing a group composed of IT and audit staff to plan, specify, develop, test, and implement the audit intranet and related applications.

If the audit department has its own programming staff, you may be able to develop the intranet in house with technical support from IT. Keep in mind, however, that there are potential pitfalls to handling the process within the department. Having the resources to accomplish programming tasks internally allows more control over development, but the department may also be more inclined to tweak and change the system throughout the process, which can prolong projects and impede progress.

EDITED BY TIM MCCOLLUM

ANTONIO CARLOS CORREIA is audit executive manager at Banco do Brasil in Brasilia.

EDER LUIZ MENEZES DE FARIA is audit manager at Banco do Brasil.

To comment on this article, e-mail the authors at acorreia@theiia.org.

Story ideas for "Computers & Auditing" should be sent to David Salierno, The IIA, 247 Maitland Ave., Altamonte Springs, FL, 32701 USA; e-mail: dsalierno@theiia.org.

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