Project report — public administration
Tax software of a state finance authority
When a change in legislation has a fixed date, test automation decides whether the deadline holds.
- Industry
- Public administration, German state finance authority
- System type
- Tax specialist system
- AereA's role
- Module development, system testing, test automation, documentation
- Period
- multi-year
Starting point
A specialist system whose changes are scheduled externally: legislative updates with a fixed date of entry into force.
Approach
Module development, specified and documented system tests, building automated tests and manual testing for form logic, accessibility and GDPR.
Result
More than 2,000 documented test cases carry the regression run for every statutory deadline.
Results at a glance
- More than 2,000 documented test cases as the basis of the regression run
- Multi-year continuous involvement in the specialist system
- GUI automation with Squish for the Qt interfaces, executed via Jenkins
- Accessibility and GDPR testing as distinct test types inside system testing, not as an afterthought
- Reproducible test environments via Proxmox and VirtualBox with synthetic test data
- Test cases, logs, reports, manuals and help texts as part of the delivery
Starting point
A tax administration system does not change because someone had a better idea, but because a law comes into force. The deadlines are set externally and cannot be moved.
The task
Further development and quality assurance over several years, with the requirement of having a reliable regression run for every statutory deadline.
Implementation
- Module development inside the live system, in C++ and Python with Qt interfaces.
- System tests — specification, execution and documentation.
- Test automation — building automated tests, GUI automation with Squish, execution via Jenkins.
- Manual testing where functional judgement is required: legislative updates, form logic, special cases.
- Specialist testing — accessibility to BITV requirements and GDPR-relevant functions and data flows.
- Test environments via Proxmox and VirtualBox, with synthetic test data — real data is ruled out here.
Documentation
Test cases, logs, reports, manuals and help texts were part of the scope, as was support for the end-user helpdesk. In public administration, documentation is part of the evidence, not accompanying material.
Conclusion
This project is why accessibility and GDPR testing are distinct test types for us rather than filed under “other checks” — and why this website has its own accessibility statement.
Technologies
Frequently asked questions
Why GUI automation with Squish?
Because the business logic sits in forms and their dependencies and can only be verified completely through the interface. Squish covers the Qt-based interfaces that a pure API test level cannot reach.
How do you test accessibility?
In combination: automated checks for the machine-verifiable criteria, plus a manual keyboard pass and screen reader sampling. Automated tools only cover part of the WCAG criteria.
Contact
Your contact
Quality assurance, test management & company management