[michaelt]

Or indeed you're in a position of overlapping authority.

Universities will often have a cash-strapped organisation-wide IT Department (e-mail for english majors) and another layer of IT in certain academic departments (computer labs for CS students) and another layer of IT after that (the centre for machine learning paid for that cluster, of course they have full authority over it) - and often it's that third-level body that's getting all the grant funding and publishing all the papers.

The people who control www.example.edu might basically be the marketing department for their glossy student recruitment brochure. Who's to say they have authority over certificate issuance for datasets.ml.cs.example.edu ?