Working with people

I’m particularly interested in the practical issues of working with people, about "making sense of others’ worlds" and finding out who "are immersed in those worlds of others". Those people must be public sector clients in projects that involve external IT consultants and suppliers. Public sector project management is particularly complex, so I anticipate problems of going beyond discourse to gain insight through observation, interviews, perhaps focus groups with clients of different types, consultants and suppliers.

Research question: How do public sector managers evaluate the IT consultants and suppliers that they manage?

I’m sure that I will need to work with people because of what the literature says about relationships, so what are the issues?

Working with people involves issues of:

• place,
  
• philosophical and
  
• practical issues and
  
• analysis of data.
  

Primarily I think practical issues will be about access.

Issues of setting up and doing field work

• of locating a role and managing entry, creating an identity for my self - not being a threat to my interviewees to gain confidence trust support and agreement beforehand
• locating key informants and how they are seen by others, with background and perceptions of informants, developing field relationships
• Send material to key people in the organisation to check there are no transgressions of any boundaries.
• I shall reword what I present to my informants to avoid the word 'accountability' with its connotations of blame and fault.

Ethical issues
Who is going to benefit from the research?

How does someone get public sector clients to manage strategic risk, change and the IT consultants that bring change. Answers to that question will benefit clients, consultants and ministers.

Practical – initial thoughts on design
I might want to interview a number of clients in the public sector, e.g. on 3-5 different IT projects, in 2-3 different government departments or councils or NHS. I want to know how they manage, what they manage, their perceptions of the project, its organisation, its successes, stage of the project (background) control of the project. So I'm looking for successful project management. Ask clients how they effectively manage and evaluate consultants and suppliers on the projects that they manage.