Support Groups following tickets

Hi folks,

We have traditionally allowed all of our technicians to view all tickets across SDP. We have distributed Tier-1 service desks that escalate to a centralized Tier-2 to Tier-4 groups. (That is, the Tier-1 is a single-point-of-contact support desk for customers in that area.

For security reasons, we are going to be implementing roles that prevent groups from seeing tickets in other groups. However, what we really need is for the Tier-1 technicians to see all tickets submitted by their customers across the groups/tiers so they can follow and report on the status of tickets for their customers.

Question:
Is there such a role that will grant access to requests by technicians across groups or is this a limitation? (NOTE: We can't use site due to other limitations.)
If this is a limitation, is sharing requests a viable workaround for this role limitation?
If sharing is a workaround, is there a way to share using business rules or do this programatically?

Thanks,
Adam