A Control-Data-Mapping Entity-Relationship Model for Internal Controls Construction in Database Design

The internal controls construction of a transaction system is important to management, operation and auditing. In the environment of manual operation, the internal controls of the transaction process are all done by manual mechanism. However, after the transaction processing environment has been changed from manual operation to computerized operation, the internal control techniques have been gradually transformed from manual mechanisms to computerized methods. The essence of internal controls in operational activities is the data expressions or constraints. The adoption of information systems often results in internal control deficiencies and operating risks due to the data unavailable in database for the data expressions of internal controls. Hence, how to design database schema to support internal controls mechanism is becoming a crucial issue for a computerized enterprise. Therefore, this paper referred Entity-Relationship model (ER model) in order to propose a Control-Data-Mapping Entity-relationship (CDMER) model by manipulating the required fields of tables to design database to support internal controls construction. Finally, a simple simulated case is prepared for illustration of the CDMER model. The contribution of this paper is to enhance the reliability of information systems through internal controls construction by applying the model to design databases.