A modelling language for transparency requirements in business information systems

Abstract

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. We propose a modelling language for capturing and analysing transparency requirements amongst stakeholders in a business information system. Our language is based on four reference models which are, in turn, based on our extensive multi-disciplinary analysis of the literature on transparency. As a proof of concept, we apply our modelling language and the analysis enabled by it on a case study of marking exam papers.