Method for Eliciting Requirements in the Area of Digital Sovereignty (MERDigS)

Digital sovereignty has become increasingly important in socio-political discourse owing to the increased perception of the absence of the state of digital sovereignty. This state is based on the contradictory requirements of various parties caused by the heterogeneity of stakeholders, holding various needs and desires. A method of eliciting requirements in the area of digital sovereignty (MERDigS) was developed to create a noticeable requirements basis for software development projects that intend to enable their stakeholders in the state of digital sovereignty. It can be used in software development projects to elicit the requirements of stakeholder groups in isolation. MERDigS adopts a human-centred approach, enabling it to address the needs and desires of stakeholders as the source of requirements in digital sovereignty. It captures the full range of requirement types by implementing modules to elicit noncommunicable requirements. MERDigS is developed by adapting comparative work in the field of requirements engineering. Three experts were interviewed to assess the plausibility of the MERDigS approach. The assessment showed that this approach is plausible and reasonable. In addition, MERDigS can be designed to be more generic so that its implementation can be easily adapted to various software development projects. Future work might incorporate a parallel exchange with developers into MERDigS to directly discuss technical implementation options for elicited requirements. Further incorporation might moderate the requirements between different stakeholder groups.