Volume 13, Number 2, December 2018
| Following the Money- Constructing the Prototype of Digital Evidence Forensic Accounting Standard Operation Procedure for Government Audits |
I-Long Lin¹, Kuang-Heng Shih²*, Su-Li Lin³
Abstract
Forensic accounting (FA) can prevent corporate fraud on an ex-ante, interim, and ex-post basis. Compared to traditional audits, forensic accounting enables reasonability assessments and confirmatory services and hence it serves better preventative purposes. After a number of major frauds over recent years, the demand for forensic accounting has been rising all over the world. Currently, there are no standard operating procedures or criteria for forensic accounting across countries, although some scholars and organizations have come up with relevant studies or work manuals for internal references. A number of journals and papers have examined how to deter corporate fraud. However, there are few discussions on the prevention of government agency fraud, let alone the integration of fraud auditing and forensic accounting in the context of government audits.
This paper explores the warning signs found by fraud auditing and digital forensic techniques of forensic accounting, in order to standardize the process and method of data gathering. The purpose is to reduce the likelihood of errors. The integrated and real-time information flow generated by technology is introduced into government audits. The construction of the Digital Evidence Forensic Accounting Standard Operation Procedure for Government Audits (DEFASOP for GOV Audits) can resolve the problems of understaffing in government audits and achieve continuous auditing (CA).
Keywords: DEFASOP, Digital forensic, Fraud auditing, Forensic accounting.
JEL Classification: M41, M42, M48
¹ Professor, Department of Information Management, Yuanpei University of Medical Technology, Taiwan
² Associate Professor, Department of International Business, Chinese Culture University, Taiwan (*Corresponding Author, E-mail:sgh2@ulive.pccu.edu.tw)
³ Master of IE, National I-Lan University, Taiwan