Death of an IT department

Gartner is stating that IT departments block innovation. They try to control desktop environments of personell. I have a similar example, where I have not been able to install an ActiveX control myselve on my machine. I had to consult my IT department, which were of course very willing to help me despite their policy. However, the next day I learned that it was quite easy to do it myselve. I only needed to install a plugin in for Firefox that emulates the Information Explorer and I was able to install the ActiveX control.

This simple example learns that there will always be backdoors to policies and security. An IT Department has to look at its basic function, which is providing an infrastructure on which personell can work. Much software for daily work is already free on the Internet, e.g. text processing and presentation software. Storage also becomes cheaper and is already available as a service.
So, the basic question is up to us knowledge workers: do we want to operate within an organizational environment or do we want to be part of a network? An IT department has to assure that assets of an organization are only accessible by those authorized. Knowledge is one of the assets. Authorisation must be organized as a federated system so we do not need to have many identities.