Engineering transparency requirements: A modelling and analysis framework

Transparency is a requirement that denotes the communication of information that should help audience to take informed decisions. The existing research on transparency in information systems usually focuses on the party who provides transparency and its inter-relation with other requirements such as privacy, security and regulatory requirements. Engineering transparency, however, also requires the analysis of the information receivers’ situation and their transparency requirements and the medium used to communicate and present the information. A holistic consideration of transparency will enhance its management and increase its usefulness. In this paper, we provide a novel engineering framework, consisting of a modelling language and nine analytical reasonings, which is meant to represent transparency requirements and detect a set of possible side-effects. Examples of such detections include detecting information overload, information starvation, and transparency leading to biased decisions. We then evaluate the modelling language through a case study and report the results

Engineering of transparency requirements in business information systems

Transparency is defined as the open flow of high quality information in a meaningful and useful manner amongst stakeholders in a business information system. Therefore transparency is a requirement of businesses and their information systems. It is typically linked to positive ethical and economic attributes, such as trust and accountability. Despite its importance, transparency is often studied as a secondary concept and viewed through the lenses of adjacent concepts such as security, privacy and regulatory requirements. This has led to a reduced ability to manage transparency and deal with its peculiarities as a first-class requirement. Ad-hoc introduction of transparency may have adverse effects, such as information overload and reduced collaboration. The thesis contributes to the knowledge on transparency requirements by proposing the following. First, this thesis proposes four reference models for transparency. These reference models are based on an extensive literature study in multiple disciplines and provide a foundation for the engineering of transparency requirements in a business information system. Second, this thesis proposes a modelling language for modelling and analysing transparency requirements amongst stakeholders in a business information system. This modelling language is based on the proposed four reference models for transparency. Third, this thesis proposes a method for the elicitation and adaptation of transparency requirements in a business information system. It covers the entire life cycle of transparency requirements and utilises the transparency modelling language for modelling and analysis of transparency requirements. It benefits from three concepts of crowdsourcing, structured feedback acquisition and social adaptation for the elicitation and adaptation of transparency requirements. The thesis also evaluates the transparency modelling language in terms of its usefulness and quality using two different case studies. Then, the feedback acquisition section in the transparency elicitation and adaptation method is evaluated using a third case study. The results of these case studies illustrate the potentials and applicability of both the modelling language and the method in the engineering of transparency requirements in business information systems