Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 6(8): 500-509, 2012 ISSN 1991-8178 Corresponding Author: Ali Abdulbaqi Ameen, School of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, UKM, 43600 Selangor, Malaysia 500 Towards Harnessing Financial Information Systems in Reducing Corruption: A Review of Strategies Ali Abdulbaqi Ameen and Kamsuriah Ahmad School of Computer Science, Faculty of Information Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, UKM, 43600 Selangor, Malaysia Abstract: Corruption is one of the major challenges that affect the world with their harmful effects that obstruct the development of the countries. Corruption exists everywhere, where most developing and developed nations affected by the harmful effects of corruption. Different countries proposed different strategies and approaches to reduce corruption. The conventional strategies and approaches of anti-corruption are often focused on organizational reform, law enforcement and social change. A lot of studies have reported that the information system applications play a vital role in public management. This indicates that the information systems have a lot of prospects in reducing the corruption. Therefore it is the interest of this paper to review the existing FISs and how it can be used to reduce corruption. To review the existing FISs, the study employs a repetitive design approach, which comprises literature review, content analysis and website analysis. It attempts to explore the theoretical background on the concepts of anti-corruption strategies, the coalition of anti-corruption, the common contribution factors and well-known FISs. The result of this review could help shape the direction of both future theoretical and empirical studies on anti-corruption, specifically on enhancing FISs in order to reduce corruption. This study could play a significant role in explaining the complex relationships between the related factors and quality of FISs to facilitate the anti-corruption process. Key words: Financial Information System (FIS), reduce corruption, anti-corruption process. INTRODUCTION The heavy use and dependence on information system has made the organizations to concentrate on enhancing and employing the financial information systems. Nevertheless, these systems play a crucial role in the management of public reform. These systems have enabled the public and private organizations to deliver timely, accurate and inexpensive services to the common public. Furthermore, these systems assist the people in their jobs by providing improved public services, aiding public engagement and helping in the community development (Shim and Eom, 2009). Current financial management information systems gather and process information with the help of a computer and help in financial accounting and reporting. Furthermore, these systems are capable of improving public productivity, supporting good governance, enhancing the responsibility of government and helping in reducing corruption. Corruption is one of the major challenges that affect the world with their harmful effects that obstruct the development of most of the countries. As mentioned, corruption is the root cause of the decline in the economical development of many nations (Andersen, 2009). Corruption exists everywhere, where most developing and developed nations are affected by the harmful effects of corruption (Tanzi, 1998). Different countries proposed different strategies and approaches to reduce corruption. The conventional strategies and approaches of anticorruption are often focused on organizational reform, law enforcement and social changes (Shim and Eom, 2009; Bertot, Jaeger and Grimes, 2010). A lot of studies have reported that the information system applications play vital role in public management (Bob and Harindranath, 2009). This indicates that the information systems have a lot of prospects in reducing the corruption. Moreover, the Internet, social media, e-government, e-business, mobile technology and others have a variety of applications in these contexts (Jaeger and Grimes, 2010). Currently, a lot of efforts have been invested in terms of minimizing corruption in the various quarters of our life. For example, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has developed an electronic system called Online Procedures Enhancement for civil application (OPEN) for reducing corruption (Kim, Kim and Lee, 2009). Although ICT tools have contributed a lot in reducing corruption, still the monetary corruption is one of the most important problems that affect the municipal, public and private sectors. To discuss this issue in more details, the paper is organized as follows: Section II elucidates the methodology while Section III provides research background to explain the key issues of corruption and anti- corruption strategies. Section IV provides theoretical background about financial information system (FISs) and the efforts, which have been invested to develop these systems. The section V presents the key attempts to utilize ICTs in reducing corruption and