Frameworks of controls

Civil servants, and presumably other public servants, have policies and procedures though which they are meant to exercise their accountability. These include:

• Gateway reviews
• OGC framework contracts

I think I can work out these frameworks from the secondary sources that government bodies provide, such as:

• NAO, 2006 Delivering successful IT-enabled business change and its companion on case studies,
• NAO, 2004 Improving IT procurement: The impact of the Office of Government Commerce’s initiatives on departments and suppliers in the delivery of major IT-enabled projects
  
• POST, 2003 Government IT projects - analysis of the problem Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology

The OGC web site has heaps of information. It includes responsibilities for project board executives. That site indicates what the Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) is responsible for and includes tasks like appointing, signing off, agreeing, authorising, communication, resolving, so lots of good verbs. Skills include ability to understand, broker relationships, provide delegated authority and being aware. The skills that interest me are:

• providing delegated authority what authority? from what? to whom?
• being aware of the broader perspective - that must include aware of technological progress
  

The SRO gets to chair the project board, and appoints the project manager, so needs to know how to manage people and what projects are about. It all sounds great, under control, and controllable. So I shouldn't have a research topic....