Our Internet research lab needs Let’s Encrypt certificates, but most of the sites are subdomains (or sub-sub-domains, etc.) of byu.edu and we’ve hit rate limits, even before requesting our first certificate, meaning other departments are also using LE. (I presume they must also have difficulty renewing them… but anyway…)
If the IT department will not take ownership, maybe you could just get all the department heads on an email and lay out a plan for obtaining a wildcard cert for everyone to use?
There are about 100 departments. Coordinating that would take months, if it even happened at all. We would like to get started this week… And since nobody in the right places is in charge of the effort, it would just get lost as departments rotate their staff.
Speak to both the Dean of Students and Dean of Faculty, explain that you are unable to get some information/organization from the Campus IT department and that addressing this is immediately critical for student and faculty research and coursework.
They are usually VPs of the College and rank significantly higher than the Head of IT.
Unless your school is dysfunctional, they will make your problem the IT department’s problem and tell them to have it addressed by close of business tomorrow.