Obtaining Test Data in the Estonian E-Government System: Challenges and Improvement Potential
摘要
The Estonian e-government system comprises close to 2000 interfaced information systems that exchange data on the X-tee interoperability layer. To test an information system that uses data received via X-tee as input, test data that resembles real-life data must be obtained. The goal of this study is to identify and describe the existing process of obtaining test data, the supporting factors and challenges that the users of the existing process face, and the impact of the identified challenges on testing. We pose three research questions and answer them with the help of expert knowledge gathered through introspection and an interview study. We found that (i) the current process for obtaining test data is manual and follows varying practices, (ii) the current process relies on humans who can be contacted to acquire test data, it has a range of challenges and the sole supporting factor in the current process is the expert knowledge of humans who create test data, and (iii) the long time and large effort required in the current process to gain even small sets of test data is the challenge that has the most negative effect on testing. We conclude that the current process needs improvement and suggest, in the first stage, the automation of identifying the scope of test data that can be obtained, in second stage, the automatic generation of synthetic test data on demand, and in the final stage, a Synthetic Data Digital Twin as an option to improve the current situation.