Domain bureaucrats: Bungling the .gov.au space

Australia's second level domain name system for government may have an air of legitimacy, but bureaucratic bungling is confusing Web administration between levels of government, according to one German researcher.

Speaking at a seminar held by the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales yesterday, e-government researcher Martin Backes of Germany's Saarland University said that Australia's second level domain name system for government Web sites -- .gov.au -- is effective as a measure to instil user trust in dealing with the government over the Internet.

"These domain names are a sign of legal quality and assurance for the user," said Backes.

Although Backes was complementary of Australia's second level system, he said that bureaucratic mishandling of government second level domain names had become an issue, particularly with registering appropriate domain names to local councils.

While most local councils across Australia have .gov.au domains registered through their home state, a number have been left without an official government Web address due in some part to communication problems between state and federal government agencies administering the domain names, such as the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) and the General Chief Information Office of NSW (GCIO).

"In many cases it's not really clear who's acting on whose behalf when it comes to local government domains," said Backes. "There is a definite lack of agreement between agencies."

Brett Fenton, chief operating officer of domain name registering service NetRegistry, said opportunities remain to hijack government domains: "There's been some cases where someone will register a third level domain name attached to a .gov.au space and use it to direct traffic to all kinds of things."

"There's a lot of junk out there adding complexity to the .gov.au space," said Fenton, who added that the .gov.au registry is only updated every two years, and "in that time all sorts of things can go on at any level of government; change of leadership, re-naming of departments ... these all effect domain names".

A spokesperson for AGIMO told ZDNet.com.au today that it had no recent or current disputes on file to resolve.

Saarland University's Backes said that Australia's government Internet regulators required a comprehensive dispute resolution process to overcome these difficulties.

"Although the system is good, Australia needs to open up to domain name level reform," he said.

AGIMO has its own dispute resolution process for federally administered .gov.au domains, according to its spokesperson, while local council domains are under the jurisdiction of state agencies.

The German researcher's comments come after speculation last year that auDA, Australia's domain name policy body was intending to open up a simplified .au ccTLD for Australian Web sites.