Using i* to Elicit and Model Transparency in the Presence of Other Non-Functional Requirements: A Position Paper

Transparency has been, for long, a general requirement for democratic societies. The right to be informed as well as to have access to information has been an important issue on modern societies. Nowadays, Transparency has been elevated to a must have property to be delivered by governments and businesses. In an era when computer systems are ubiquitous and present in almost every aspect of our lives, it seems natural that Transparency becomes a key requirement in our software systems. We believe that Transparency can rarely be satisfied. The best we can do is to satisfy it within acceptable limits (satisfice). Therefore, we consider Transparency a Non-Functional Requirements (NFR) that should be elicited and modelled in the presence of other competing and synergistic NFR. Intentions behind the adoption of Transparency may play an important role while eliciting solutions for software to deliver appropriate levels of Transparency. Hence, we believe that the i* framework is ideal to elicit and model Transparency. This work will show initial ideas for using i* to support this effort.