Speaking the World Computer Congress 2010 in Brisbane this week, Cathy Blunt, manager of Griffith University’s internal audit office, provided an interesting insight into the main contributing factors to failed or inefficient IT products in government agencies. The public university has itself undergone internal changes to prevent similar failures, though Blunt wasn’t shy of self-criticism in her review of what sends government IT projects over the edge.

There are several types of software license audits, each with their own risks and variables, experts say.

Oracle licensing consultant Eliot Arlo Colon still remembers the enormous global publishing company that was "so darn confident" it would breeze through an upcoming software license audit unscathed.

In the early days of computers, many people were suspicious of their ability to replace human beings performing complex tasks. The first business software applications were mostly in the domain of finance and accounting. The numbers from paper statements and receipts were entered into the computer, which would perform calculations and create reports. Computers were audited using sampling techniques. An auditor would collect the original paper statements and receipts, manually perform the calculations used to create each report, and compare the results of the manual calculation with those generated by the computer. In the early days, accountants would often find programming errors, and these were computer audit findings.