I worked briefly in public administration at one point in my career. I asked the admins the same thing, could I get Emacs installed on my machine. I got a bit concerned when the admin staff asked back: "What is Emacs?"

I was a bit surprised when about ten years ago I noticed that there were now really only two reactions to my Emacs use:

"Emacs? What's that? Oh, sorry, I like things with an actual UI."

Or:

"Emacs? I remember that from my DEC days. I'm surprised it's still around!"