Domain Name Moderation - Home

Background

The '.govt.nz' domain is moderated by the State Services Commission (SSC). The principles that are applied to the moderation process have been developed to ensure that trust and integrity of government communication with users of online services is as high as can be achieved. The approach preserves the over-arching brand of .govt.nz (the Crown), and guards against fragmentation of the brand equity balanced against the needs of central and local government agencies to efficiently and effectively deliver services and information.

In some government jurisdictions (for example, Canadian federal sites), there is a very clear brand that is consistent across all web sites. This is also increasingly common in the corporate sector where a corporate third level domain name (such as product.company.com or company.com/product) is used, rather than registering a separate third-level domain for every marketing campaign (eg, productisreallycheapthismonth.com).

Principles for .govt.nz domain names

Third-level domain (TLD) names will be issued for:

• government organisations or their common-use acronyms (eg, inlandrevenue.govt.nz or wrc.govt.nz)
• the functions of government (eg, tenancy.govt.nz)
• cross-agency initiatives or "about government" sites where there is no natural lead agency (eg, worksite.govt.nz)

Third-level domain names will not normally be issued for marketing campaigns or branding exercises. These should be located on a fourth level domain (eg, booksRus.natlib.govt.nz).

Policy

A formal policy for Government domain names has been prepared by the Commission and is available here.

Last updated 29 Feb 2008