IT departments need to step up their efforts to comply with
a raft of corporate governance legislation that will come into
effect from the end of the year, experts have
warned.
Many organisations not affected by the US Sarbanes-Oxley
legislation, which aims to prevent corporate accounting scandals,
will have to comply with the Companies Bill currently passing
thought Parliament.
The Bill introduces criminal offences for company directors that
knowingly make false statements to their auditors and gives
auditors greater rights to demand information from firms.
Companies listed in the European Union will from 1 January 2005
have to comply with new international accounting rules. IT systems
affected by the rule change include treasury, general ledger,
accounting and enterprise resource planning systems.
Dennis Keeling, chief executive of the Business Application
Software Developers Association, said, "The coming months are
critical for IT departments. They need to do a very thorough
systems analysis and ensure that they can track back information
from the [published] accounts.
"They might need to invest in new technology to track changes to
documents. This has never had to be done before and is a major
problem."