Designing the Model of Intelligent Audit in the Supreme Audit Court of Iran with an Interpretive-Structural Modeling Approach

The increasing growth in information and the complexity of organizations and the dimensions of organizational issues on the one hand and the serious limitations of human resources and financial resources despite the unique mission and supervisory roles considered for the Supreme Audit Court of Iran, on the other hand, the adoption of new approaches in supervision including the intelligentization of the remarkable portion of processes and the use of information technology capacities have made it an undeniable necessity for such organizations. Based on this, in recent years, the discussion of intelligentization is raised as a basic necessity in many organizations. But the first and very basic issue for such a development is the uncertainty of its concept, dimensions, and components, which have been neglected to a large extent. For this purpose, in this research, using the Interpretive-Structural modeling approach as the main research method and using the soft systems methodology as a secondary and supplementary method, after explaining the concept of intelligent audit, the components and elements of intelligent audit at the level of the Supreme Audit Court and the model of Its cognitive mapping was designed. Finally, after leveling the elements, the fourteen identified elements were categorized into three general categories: "drivers and requirements", "design and implementation elements" and "outputs" and the relationships between them were analyzed.  

Introduction:

With the ever-increasing changes and the formation of new needs, revising processes, including regulatory processes, is an undeniable necessity, and using new tools and methods is of fundamental importance for regulatory organizations, including the Supreme Audit Court. Because, on the one hand, the increasing growth of information and the complexity of organizations and the dimensions of organizational issues, and on the other hand, the serious limitations of human resources and financial resources, despite the unique mission and supervisory role considered for the National Audit Office in the laws and regulations, the importance of updating the processes of this supreme supervisory body and the use of new supervisory tools have doubled.Case studyIn this research, the Supreme Audit Court of Iran has been selected as the subject of study due to its position and basic duties. According to the laws and regulations, the Supreme Audit Court, as a supreme supervisory body, has the duty of monitoring, reviewing and controlling the resources and expenses of the entire country's budget, the properties and assets of the executive bodies, and in general the protection of funds, properties and assets subject to public ownership.

Materials and Methods:

In order to identify the elements of intelligent auditing, along with semi-structured interviews, Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) was used. For this purpose, more than 40 hours of interviews were conducted with 29 experts. After implementing Soft Systems Methodology, intelligent audit elements were extracted, modified, and finalized with the help of experts in a round-trip process. In the next step, to model and prepare the cognitive mapping of elements, an Interpretive-Structural Modeling (ISM) questionnaire was designed and distributed among experts, and finally, the outputs were summarized and analyzed based on 15 completed questionnaires.

Discussion and Results:

The identified elements of intelligent auditing in the Supreme Audit Court are: 1. Integration of information and financial systems of executive bodies 2. Online or timely access to data of executive bodies and information systems 3. Validation of systems of executive bodies 4. Design and use of artificial intelligence tools 5. Training and recruitment of required specialists 6. Redesigning the structure and processes of the court based on the requirements of intelligence 7. Timely warning of violations, crimes and malfeasance 8. Automated processes as much as possible 9. Change management 10. Designing and using data analysis tools 11. Knowledge Management (accumulation, classification and presentation) 12. Systematic management of audit processes 13. Country governance monitoring dashboard 14. Systematic identification of control weaknesses of executive bodies. The cognitive mapping of these elements was determined during the structural-interpretive modeling steps, and finally, these elements were categorized into three general categories: "drivers and requirements", "design and implementation elements" and "outputs", and the relationships between them were analyzed. Also, the graph of influence and dependence of elements was drawn.

Conclusion:

"Education and recruitment of required specialists" and "redesigning the structure and processes of the Court based on the requirements of intelligence" are considered the most basic matters and perhaps it can be said that the starting points of audit intelligence in the Supreme Audit Court. Also, "change management" plays an essential role in the process of intelligence and will somehow facilitate this process. In general, without the implementation of drivers and requirements, the success of intelligent audit in the Supreme Audit Court of Iran seems unlikely.The design and implementation elements of the intelligent audit are all placed on the same level, and the mutual communication of these elements with each other indicates the necessity of their joint implementation to form an intelligent audit. The mentioned elements form the main part of the intelligent audit in the Supreme Audit Court and their collection forms the expected outputs of the intelligent audit.Also, the four elements of the first to fourth levels show the outputs of intelligent auditing. With the correct execution of the previous items, these outputs are expected to be achieved.