1.According to Wang and Cuthbertson (2015), the potentially important role played by Big Data(BD) and Big Data Analytics (BDA) in innovative auditing practice is evident. Quite a few studies have discussed and analysed broad areas of BD and BDA in external auditing by explaining and providing a context for researchers, drawing their attention to it in terms of general issues (Alles and Gray, 2016; Alles, 2015; Earley, 2015; Wang and Cuthbertson, 2015; Arnaboldi et al., 2017; Connelly et al., 2016) and arguing that the use of BDA is appropriate and valuable to ensure the audit quality (Dubey and Gunasekaran, 2015; Brown-Liburd et al.,2015; Vasarhelyi et al.,2015). BDA may improve the efficiency and effectiveness of financial statement audits (KPMG, 2017; Cao et al., 2015; Yoon et al.,2015; Gepp et al.,2018), but additional competencies and technological capabilities are necessary to implement BDA (KPMG, 2017; Enget et al.,2017; Dubey and Gunasekaran, 2015; Brown-Liburd et al., 2015; Zhang et al.,2015; Appelbaum et al.,2017, 2018)

Discuss the desire to apply a Big Data and Big Data Analytics in the external auditing process and how intensively are these factors expressed by audit companies, business clients and regulators?

1. Desire to apply big data
2. How extensive is it expressed