2026-10-05T21:32:54Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:27982 2026-10-05T06:44:02Z ddc:004 open_access

Global Miscommunication in Privacy Requirements Engineering: Legal Experts’ Experiences Collaborating with Software Engineers Negri-Ribalta, Claudia Visescu, Ioana Frank, Muriel-Larissa Sergeeva, Anastasia Simon, Alberto García Noel, Rene Chamorro, Lorena Sánchez data protection mental models privacy collaboration Background. Regulatory data protection requirements (RDPRs) impose requirements on organizations, which translate into technical and organizational measures for their information systems (IS). Meeting these requirements necessitates the collaboration between interdisciplinary teams of lawyers and software engineers. Previous studies indicate that engineers often struggle to interpret and translate RDPRs. Conversely, little is known about the experiences of lawyers when working on RDPRs in interdisciplinary teams, even though their legal interpretations shape the requirements imposed on IS. Aim. Therefore, this paper seeks to unpack the challenges that lawyers face when collaborating with software engineers to implement data protection requirements and to put them in motion in case of privacy breaches. Method. Through a deductive qualitative analysis, this paper analyzes semi-structured interviews with 70 data protection lawyers from 25 countries. Results. Our findings highlight that lawyers throughout regions and regardless of their cultural background describe similar challenges when collaborating with engineers: a lack of shared language and mental models. Lawyers also point out that engineers misunderstand RDPRs for various reasons, not just a lack of education. Furthermore, we identify the key elements that hinder or facilitate collaboration and their implications for privacy engineering. Conclusions: This study is a large qualitative research with participants from multiple countries. Our results suggest that lawyers perceive different challenges when collaborating with software engineers, regardless of their culture. These results suggest these challenges are structural rather than cultural. Organizations should prioritize developing methods and artifacts to overcome these challenges. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Claudia Negri-Ribalta and Ioana Visescu and Muriel-Larissa Frank and Anastasia Sergeeva and Alberto García Simon and Rene Noel and Lorena Sánchez Chamorro 2026 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 394, 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.14 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-279828 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.14 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode