Accounting Information Systems 9th Edition by James Hall

Exercise 53

SPL RISKS AND CONTROLS
Orben Manufacturing Company has an in-house IT department that incurs a high volume of new development and program maintenance projects. To efficiently manage the workload, the director of IT has combined the systems development and maintenance functions into a single department. This allows the programmers of new applications to also maintain those applications. The immediate effect has been an increase in the work flow by reducing the startup time needed by programmers to become familiar with the systems being modified. It also reduces the time spent on system documentation. Since the designer and the maintenance programmer are the same person, highly detailed and standardized documentation is not needed. To achieve cross training, programmers also maintain applications programmed by other IT personnel. This has resulted in an "open" library policy that allows programmers to access any program stored in the SPL. Programmers download the application undergoing maintenance to their personal computers, perform the necessary maintenance, and then restore the application to the SPL under its original name.
Required
a. Comment on the trade-off between efficiency and control as it pertains in this situation.
b. Discuss the risk potential related to Orben Manufacturing's program change procedures.
c. Discuss the controls that would reduce the risks described in (b) above.