There are two interesting anecdotes from where I work. It's a materials R&D facility. We needed access to SciFinder, the largest on-line database of peer reviewed science journals in the world. But our IT guys didn;t like the fact that it had to write to a specific port that they wanted closed on our firewall (I'm not an IT guy so please forgive any mis-diescriptions on my part). So for 2 years, over 100 researchers had to use a dial up modem on a PC separate from the network. All because some IT guy in corporate HQ on the other side of the country knew how to do R&D.
The second story comes from dealing with the same IT masterminds. We have a lot of scientific instruments that are computer driven. Our IT guys installed all kinds of management software that disrupted the operation of the instruments. We were told that if the instrument could not run with the management software, then the computer couldn't be used. Moreover, in order to avoid conflicts with the management software, IT would review our instrument requirements and specify what scientific instruments we could use based strictly on their conformity to network policy. So somoe IT guy is going to make descisions that only a qualified PhD researcher should be making!
Well, when our international HQ, where our R&D results go, hear about the stuff the IT department was pulling on us with the blessing of the U.S. HQ, the matter was resolved. The IT guy was told off and all of his restrictions lifted, management software pulled, aside from anti-virus standardization, and we could actually do research.
THey didn't care if it would cost us almost $1 million to upgrade electron microscope lab from Windows NT to XP just for the sake of U.S. software standardization. At least they didn't care until they were told they would have to pay for it out of their budget.
Great examples. The Mordak character in the Dilbert cartoons should be popular with your group.