Information quality requirements engineering with STS-IQ

Context: Information Quality (IQ) is particularly important for organizations: they depend on information for managing their daily tasks and relying on low-quality information may negatively influence their overall performance. Despite this, the literature shows that most software development approaches do not consider IQ requirements during the system design, which leaves the system open to different kinds of vulnerabilities. Objective: The main objective of this research is proposing a framework for modeling and analyzing IQ requirements for Socio-Technical Systems (STS). Method: We propose STS-IQ, a goal-oriented framework for modeling and analyzing IQ requirements in their social and organizational context since the early phases of the system design. The framework extends and refines our previous work, and it consists of: (i) a modeling language that provides concepts and constructs for modeling IQ requirements; (ii) a set of analysis techniques that support the verification of the correctness and consistency of the IQ requirements model; (iii) a mechanism for deriving the final IQ specifications in terms of IQ policies; (iv) a methodology to assist software engineers during the system design; and (v) a CASE tool, namely STS-IQ Tool. Result: We demonstrated the applicability, usefulness, and scalability of the modeling and reasoning techniques within a stock market case study, and we also evaluated the usability and utility of the framework with end-users. Conclusion: We conclude that the STS-IQ framework supports the modeling and analysis of IQ requirements, and also the derivation of precise IQ specifications in terms of IQ policies. Therefore, we believe it has potential in practice.