The information audit: Role and scope

The information audit (IA) is central to the effective organisational management of information, however, there is evidence from the field that the IA is neither fully accepted nor commonly practiced. This paper highlights and discusses three challenges to current practice: limited guidance on management of scope; ambiguous linkage to related ICT development processes; and the lack of a standard methodological approach. In response to these challenges, the role and scope of the IA is re-examined, key relationships to information strategy and information system architecture (ISA) are defined and mapped, and a two-dimensional matrix is proposed to manage scope.