About DigAudit

About DigAudit

DigAudit (Digital Audit Research Project) is a five-year NHH research project funded by the Research Council of Norway.

The research project focuses on the transformation of the audit profession to adapt to the ongoing process of increasingly widespread digital data capture, known as Big Data, and to the use of advanced analytics to analyse that data, known as Audit Data Analytics (ADA). 

The research will gain new and relevant insights into the benefits and obstacles affecting the ongoing digital transformation of the audit process. The knowledge will assist the audit profession in the transformation process and innovate the education of auditors to prepare for the new digital professional reality.

The DigAudit project is performed by a multidisciplinary team of NHH and international researchers, and conducted in close collaboration with the large international audit firms.

Research topics

DigAudit searches to gain deep insight into the audit profession's transformation to the widespread use of Big Data and ADA by answering the following questions: 

  • What is the nature and extent of auditors' competence and application of advanced ADA using Big Data?
  • How can Big Data and ADA be leveraged to improve auditors’ judgments and decision-making in the audit process?
  • How does digitalization of the audit clients affect internal controls and the audit?
  • How are students best trained and prepared for a professional career in a highly digitalized audit environment?

Aims

DigAudit aims are twofold:

  • To gain factual knowledge of auditors' digital competence and the current status of the usage of Big Data and ADA in the auditing profession.
  • To provide fundamental novel insights into how human behavior and social organizations affect the benefits and limitations of the usage of Big Data and ADA, both in audit practice and in the training of auditors.

DigAudit will achieve its goals by:

  • Initiating and publishing new research
  • Bringing together a multidisciplinary team of international and NHH researchers
  • An unique corroboration with the large audit firms
  • Initiating master thesis and PhD dissertations on audit digitalization
  • Writing articles and chronicles and take part in the professional debate
  • Organizing conferences and workshops where researchers and professionals meet
  •  Increasing the focus on digitalization for NHH students and offering new courses in digital auditing

Contact us

Phone
+47 55 95 98 92
Email
ingrid.saethre@nhh.no

  • A Digitalized Business World

    A Digitalized Business World

    In the current business environment technological changes to capture and communicate data digitally take place in an unprecedented scale. Comprehensive and powerful digital information systems are increasingly capable of handling, analyzing, communicating and responding to these data-related changes.

  • The audit profession

    The audit profession

    The audit profession plays a key role to build public trust and confidence in corporate financial reporting. To serve its public interest-mission an audit and the audit evidence collection must be conducted in an efficient and effective manner. The technological advancements and developments in Big Data and ADA offer great opportunities but also pose challenges to obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence. 

  • Big Data

    Big Data

    Big Data has been defined as high-volume, high-velocity, and high-variety information assets that demand cost effective, innovative forms of information processing for enhanced insight and decision making (Gartner Research 2014).
    Thus, Big Data pushes the domain of data far outwards from financial data to non-financial data, from structured to unstructured data, and from inside the organization to outside it (AICPA 2015).

  • Audit Data Analytics (ADA)

    Audit Data Analytics (ADA)

    Audit Data Analytics (ADA) is defined as the science and art of discovering and analyzing patterns, identifying anomalies, and extracting other useful
    information in data underlying or related to the subject matter of an audit through analysis, modeling, and visualization for the purpose of planning or performing the audit (AICPA 2015).
    Big Data Analytics is understood as ADA applied to Big Data.