More info from original poster (Score 2, Informative)

Some more information about our company. We are a company that has gone from 3 employees to 500 total in about 30 years. The current president founded the company, does not understand technology, same with most vice-presidents around him. The divisions in the company are run pretty much like separate companies, but IT comes out of every budget.

The CIO attempts to fix by bringing current problems by e.g. we're running at 95% of network storage, and we don't have backup email server if the power goes out (twice last month) to the board meeting. The vice-presidents who don't understand the technology or the implications say no to the cost without understanding the impact.

Me and other users would like to coordinate with IT so that before they go to the president and ask for money that they come through us so they can get the support from the us as well. But the other issue that we have is that they will roll out "upgrades" without coordinating first.

CIO - We're going to Office 2003, here is the upgrade schedule, it's been blessed by the President

US - We have customers that require Access 2000, and converting them back and forth is a good way to crash them

CIO - We're locking down the computers effective today so you can't install anything.

US - We create executables for distribution, we can't test on our machines.

Granted these problems can be worked out, but its better to do it in advance. How would you create the hooks so the IT staff is responsible to user requests, but still remains the clearinghouse for technology?

BTW - None of yagu's potential problems are here, no layoffs, bene's are great, and most people are generally happy. Senior IT management isn't that technical, but that's for another day.