request their domain name from the state
rather than the federal government.
Officials at VITA believe the benefit of
this domain change provides state agencies and institutions of
higher education with standardization for agency websites and
email addresses. With standardization there is the advantage of
electronic directories, reduction in overhead as well as
administrative costs, improved customer service and it lays the
foundation for rebranding the Virginia Portal from state.va.us
to virginia.gov.
In a recent VITA information overview, it
is written that “localities have not, and never were,
required to use the virginia.gov domain.” The standard
was written for state agencies with guidance included for
localities if they chose to use the virginia.gov domain as part
of their URL. VITA has formed a workgroup, similar to the
Council on Technology Services (COTS), to revise and develop
guidelines for localities to use should they decide to use the
virginia.gov domain.
For others the viewpoint is somewhat
different. Dave Molchany, chief information officer and a
deputy county executive for Fairfax County, has said that
“many localities already have .gov domain names and
administration of domainnames was not something that the
Commonwealth of Virginia originally wanted to organize
statewide.” So, for localities already using the
.gov domain name there is the concern of branding. Once a
citizen or other customer is acclimated to a locality’s
URL, the brand is set.
Changing a brand is difficult for any
locality. Additionally, there is the concern related to long
URL names. There is the viewpoint that cumbersome domain names
pose a major problem for some localities. For instance, the
fictitious locality of Hartfordshire uses as a domain
While trying to come up with an
interesting opening for this issue’s column, I
stumbled across the website for the Northwest Territories. Now
what, what you might ask, does a Canadian province and
Virginia’s localities have in common? Well, for starters,
both have amazing potential for continued development. Then
there’s the sense of enthusiasm for the future. Add to
that the challenge of making the most of every opportunity for
growth and the two aren’t really that far apart.
Interestingly enough, that comparison
might work for some, but for others, it would make them scratch
their heads. The reason for that is; everyone has a different
perspective and viewpoint on any one issue. Take the recent
debate about the Virginia.gov domain naming standard. There are
a number of people who question Virginia Information
Technologies Agency’s (VITA) reform efforts in this area,
there are others who don’t see it as a problem and then
there’s VITA’s position on the issue.
Like I said, there’s a different
viewpoint for everything. So this article is designed to
provide you with the different debate positions and let you
make up your own mind. Perhaps the best place to start is with
VITA since they’ve developed a standard for Internet
domain names in the Commonwealth. First, let me explain what a
domain name is. A domain name is essentially a name given to a
particular Internet address. If you visit www.yahoo.com,
you’re visiting a domain. For the purpose of this
article, we’re focusing primarily on that three letter
extension at the end of the URL (uniform resource locator)
address.
Businesses often use .com or .biz, while
organizations primarily use .org and educational institutions
use .edu. Presently localities use a couple of different
extensions as part of their domain name (Internet address) such
as www.ci.localityname.va.us (for cities),
www.co.localityname.va.us (for counties) or
www.localityname.gov to name a few.
July 2003 saw VITA successfully converting
to the virginia.gov domain. The reason for this change was to
avoid conflicts with postal codes and existing domain names
between the Commonwealth and the US Veteran’s Affairs.
Following guidelines established by the
federal dotgov registrar, VITA registered a domain name that
utilizes the full state name. Another one of the federal
guidelines indicated that VITA was free to develop policies on
how local governments should be registered under virginia.gov.
Note that the federal guidelines referred only to the
virginia.gov domain name; no other domain was mentioned. In
this instance, localities would
The author is the IT (information
technology) Project Manager for Roanoke County. She is a
member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), and
local chapter Blue Ridge PRSA.
