It isn't a UX problem, it's a political problem. It departments are responsible for, among other things securing their company's computing resources and ensuri

It isn't a UX problem, it's a political problem. It departments are responsible for, among other things securing their company's computing resources and ensuring their availability to support the business. The most expedient way, in their view, to accomplish this mission is to keep as much direct control over those resources as they can, even if it means the users are "inconvenienced". Add to this the human tendency to inflate the importance of your own problems and deflate the importance of other people's problems and you end up with a situation where everyone outside of IT runs crippled machines or thin clients and has to call on IT for every change or update of substance. There is a happy medium, but IT (largely) is not interested in it. The current system meets their needs very well, but they have lost sight of the needs of their users.