Engineering of transparency requirements in business information systems.

Abstract

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.