It is important to be able to monitor the changes in the control environment within the organisation; one of the main objectives of risk management is to achieve and maintain the optimum control environment. This means that, if control weaknesses are detected and remedial action is considered necessary, the risk management process needs to be able to track the progress of such action and the effect of the action taken so far on the control environment. In addition, a particular Entity, whilst not exactly well controlled, might be considered to be at an acceptable level at present; it is important to be able to monitor the situation over time to detect what might be a slight but persistent increase in the “control gap”. All of this requires the system to have a History Tracking module.
This chart shows the “Scoring History” for each Entity. Periodically snapshots of the system are taken so as to build up a history of how individual Entities are performing. The system will capture the previous control situations and these snapshots are compiled here into a line graph showing Target, Working, Actual and Gross scores for the Entity on each of the History Capture dates:
If any of these changes need to be researched further, this can be done using the Audit Log capability accessed through the Administration Screen.