Requirements Elicitation in Government Projects: A Preliminary Empirical Study

Government development projects vary significantly from private sector initiatives in scope, stakeholder complexity, and regulatory requirements. There is a lack of empirical studies focusing on requirements engineering (RE) activities specifically for government projects. We addressed this gap by conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with 12 professional software practitioners working on government projects. These interviewees are employed by two types of companies, each serving different government departments in China. Our findings uncover differences in the requirements elicitation phase between government projects, particularly for data visualization aspects, and other non-government software projects, such as stakeholders and policy requirements. Additionally, we explore the coverage of human and social aspects in requirements elicitation, finding that culture, team dynamics, and policy implications are critical considerations. Our findings also pinpoint the main challenges encountered during the requirements elicitation phase for government projects. Our findings propose future research work that is important to bridge the gap in RE activities for government software projects.