The Alignment of INTOSAI and Romanian Public External Audit Standards, Guidelines and Institutional Focus to the Data Driven Context

Abstract

Disruptive technologies are shaping our world in a wide range of manners, from targeted advertising to self-driving cars. Their impact becomes more complex in highly-regulated, judgmentintensive fields, such as public external audit. While auditees operate in an increasingly dataintensive environment, sometimes employing cutting-edge data analysis and automation tools, stakeholders expect the audit profession to step up its game and adapt to some of the better-developed IT technologies, such as robotic process automation or machine learning. While such initiatives begin to crop up, they must adhere to the stern normative framework of public external audit, stemming from INTOSAI and national authoritative audit standards, procedures and guidelines. Our research aims to shed light on the current degree of INTOSAI and Romanian standards and guidance readiness to facilitate the use of some of the latest and potentially beneficial IT concepts, as well as the results of INTOSAI collaborative initiatives on IT matters.

Keywords

• external audit
• data analytics
• sai
• audit standards
• intosai