An accounting of the information in an organization. It requires analyzing a representative sample of content materials, looking for similiar/identical information, as well information that is currently distinct, but that could/should be identical.

Preparing a Content Audit is probably the single most important step in preparing for implementation of a Content Management System, or the migration of content into a new CMS.

Basically it is a Content Inventory or Content Survey, simply an accounting or list all the current content assets, but auditing implies evaluation of some kind.

With physical assets it may mean spreading things out on large tables, pasting sticky notes or hilighting them with different colored markers.

Common practice includes listing each asset in a spreadsheet program:

• the hyperlink if it is at a URL, otherwise its file or physical location
• the owners (creators, maintainers) of the content

Better practice would add:

• an evaluation of the importance of the asset
• some categorization or Meta Data that would allow grouping of content for collocation and Re Use strategies
• a matrix of items (products, services) and the types of content associated

Best practice might add:

• analyzing the content into Content Element chunks ready for Re Use
• editing similar content to create a Single Source? when possible for Re Use
• classification tools that allow an arrangement (taxonomy) of assets
• data scrubbing tools to find and correct anomalies
• validation tools to test the content (text, HTML, XHTML, XML) against standards
• conversion tools that produce compliant XML for a modern repository

Note that "audit" may also describe the Versioning and Version Control systems, which create an Audit Trail of content changes.