Government will police its own net addresses

The State Services Commission hopes to save the government tens of thousands of dollars a year in domain registration fees and transaction costs by setting up its own .govt.nz registry.

Currently domain name registration company Domainz has the sole right to register names in the .govt.nz space. It is a moderated namespace, which means before a name is granted it must be approved by the commission, with input in some circumstances from the Association of Local Government Information Managers.

Mark Harris, the commission's manager for moderation and web standards, said creating a government registry had been an option since Internet New Zealand set up the shared registry system for domain name administration.

"We started looking at the issues surrounding moderation and decided to set up a registry ourselves so we could manage the namespace more simply and reduce costs," Harris said.

The cost is not so much in registering a name but in the cost of paying invoices. A $60 invoice can hit below the horizon of many organisations, but if it is not paid a government agency can risk losing its online presence.

Harris said the cost of paying invoices ranged from $60 to $100, depending on the department.

In future, government agencies will not be billed for their domain names, but State Services will pay a monthly fee to New Zealand Registry Services, which runs the shared registry system.

It expects to have about 750 names in the space, which at wholesale rates comes to less than $1500.

Compared with the $60 a year (plus GST) that agencies pay Domainz for each name, the government will save save about $30,000 in fees alone, as well as $45,000 to $75,000 in transaction costs.

Wellington web hosting and development firm One Squared has built the registry, which has been tested successfully.

State Services intends to outsource system operation and hosting, and will tender for a suitable registrar. "It just means we will not have to deal with the box. We will still do the moderation," Harris said.

"It is a web-based application, so agencies will put the new name in and, once we approve it, we pass it on to New Zealand Registry Services for inclusion in the the next DNS zone file update."

E-government unit delivery and operations manager Edwin Bruce said the commission wanted to protect the integrity of the .govt space.

"It links back to issues of trust in the security and integrity of the internet, which the Government wants its citizens to feel confident about using," Bruce said. "There is the additional benefit that by being a registrar we can give input into the registry advisory group, which is an important body for the administration of the internet in New Zealand. It advises not just the domain name commissioner but feeds into a number of policy frameworks."

The .govt second-level domain namespace is open to Government departments, Crown entities, local authorities and other bodies with statutory responsibilities. It is not available for state-owned enterprises and local authority trading enterprises.

Crown research institutes and tertiary education institutes have their own moderated namespaces, .cri.nz and .ac.nz respectively.

Applicants must demonstrate a business need for a name, and are asked to avoid conflicts or confusion with other agencies in the sector. In its policy guidelines, the commission says three or four letter names will be used only to represent departments or other central or local government bodies where the abbreviation is widely recognised by the general public.

Generic and project names will be registered only where they are pan-departmental and of national significance, and agencies are told not to make up names in the namespace to brand individual projects.

This has led to many seemingly obvious names being unused. For example, there is no health.govt.nz, and education.govt.nz leads to a portal that takes a bit more navigating around to find the link to the Ministry of Education site at minedu.govt.nz.

Bruce said it was not for the moderator to tell agencies what names to use, but a separate e-government unit project on offering more intuitive addresses was a possibility.