SAD-Role Of Data Processing Auditor

Testing should involve a thorough auditing to introduce control elements unique to a system. The Data Processing (DP) Auditor should be involved in testing. The role of the auditor is to judge the controls and make any recommendations to change or enhance the project. The user department also has to be involved in this process. For testing programs, test data that violate control procedures and test data that do not violate control procedures are to be included. At the time of testing all the required files are collected for testing.

Audit trail:

One important function of control is to provide audit trail. Some of the problems encountered by the auditor are as follows

•  Once the source documents are transferred into a machine-readable form, they are filed in areas that make it difficult to access.
• Files stored on tapes or disks require a computer to read it.
•  Processing activities are difficult to observe since they are inside the system.

To solve this a detailed file of the transactions can be kept and they can be used as an input for an audit program. The audit program then selects a transaction for selected accounts for the auditor to view.

Three important steps are to be considered while evaluating the project

1. Define the control objectives as separate design and test requirements.
2. Reexamine budget costs
3. Review specifications