Audit committees evolve, more focus on IT

It's not surprising that the top two priorities of audit committees are 404 compliance and oversight of earnings estimates and accounting. This from the 2006-2007 Public Company Audit Committee Member Survey from KPMG and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). But audit committees are starting to evolve in significant ways. Information technology issues have become a big focus, in particular IT-related risk. Only 15 percent of the 282 audit committee members who participated in the survey were "very satisfied" with their oversight. About 20 percent said their company needed to improve. More than 90 percent felt that the committee needed to spend more time on IT risk issues. Unfortunately, while members acknowledge that the issue is paramount, they do appear to be spending the necessary time exploring these issues. Part of this is cultural, the financial side has traditionally never quite felt comfortable with the IT side. Still, forward-looking boards will find ways to ease the cultural rifts. Perhaps the CIO or CTO or chief compliance officer ought to be a part of meetings.

- here's the survey results