Building the Data Warehouse

Chapter 17. Corporate Information Compliance and Data Warehousing

Corporate information compliance has become the law of the land, at least in the United States and for companies wishing to trade securities in the United States. Some of the more prominent compliance standards are Sarbanes Oxley, Basel II, and HIPAA. These compliance standards have come about for a variety of reasons.

Probably the best-known set of circumstances is that of Sarbanes Oxley. Around the year 2000, certain corporations were caught in public scandal. The officers of the company were trying to inflate the stock price of the company fraudulently. In doing so, investors would be paying for corporate stock at a higher price that the company really warranted. The corporations inflated these stock prices through accounting "smoke and mirrors." Some of the companies caught inflating stock prices were Enron, MCI/WorldCom, and Global Crossings.

In response to the artificial accounting and deceiving transactions that were being foisted off on the public, the Sarbanes Oxley Act was enacted. Sarbanes Oxley (among other things) caused the corporation to do their accounting in a proper and honest manner. In addition, Sarbanes Oxley made executives criminally responsible for their corporation's books. Prior to Sarbanes Oxley, it was difficult to hold top management criminally responsible for corporate reporting and financial transactions. After the enactment of Sarbanes Oxley, it became possible to send executives to jail ...