Amendments to the Companies Act 2004 which came into force
earlier this month give auditors additional powers to obtain
accounting information from companies.
UK companies will have to comply with requests for information
relating to their accounts and may be subject to investigations by
the Financial Reporting Review Panel.
The amended act, which will place greater demands on organisations'
accounting systems, adds to the compliance burden on IT
directors.
Corporate governance legislation such as Basel 2 and
Sarbanes-Oxley, as well as the Freedom of Information Act for the
public sector, require IT systems to gather disparate data and
assess various risks faced by a business.
As a result, regulatory compliance has become one of the key
concerns of IT directors in all industries.
According to a survey published last month by Dell Computer, 75% of
UK IT managers believe they are not meeting all of their regulatory
compliance requirements. Of the 1,030 IT leaders questioned, more
than 50% do not expect to get a return on investment from spending
on compliance.
In addition, 45% of IT bosses said their costs had increased over
the past two years as a result of compliance work.