Towards Auditability Requirements Specification Using an Agent-Based Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces an agent-based approach to systematically specify auditability requirements within goal-oriented system design, demonstrated through a real-world judicial case study.

Contribution

It presents a novel method integrating auditability into goal-oriented agent modeling using the Tropos methodology and a transparency interdependency graph.

Findings

Successful application to a judicial lawsuit distribution system

Distributed over 300,000 lawsuits in a real court setting

Demonstrated effectiveness in addressing transparency requirements

Abstract

Transparency is an important factor in democratic societies composed of characteristics such as accessibility, usability, informativeness, understandability and auditability. In this research we focus on auditability since it plays an important role for citizens that need to understand and audit public information. Although auditability has been a subject of discussion when designing systems, there is a lack of systematization in its specification. We propose an approach to systematically add auditability requirements specification during the goal-oriented agent-based Tropos methodology. We used the Transparency Softgoal Interdependency Graph that captures the different facets of transparency while considering their operationalization. An empirical evaluation was conducted through the design and implementation of LawDisTrA system that distributes lawsuits among judges in an appellate court. Experiments included the distribution of over 300,000 lawsuits at the Brazilian Superior Labor Court. We theorize that the presented approach for auditability provides adequate techniques to address the cross-organizational nature of transparency.