auDA reviewFrom: King Jane 
Sent: Friday, 30 July 2004 4:41 PM
To: jo.lim@auda.org.au
Subject: auDA review

Dear Jo 
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on auDA's review of its restriction on 
the registration of geographic names in the .com.au and .net.au domain space. 

In discussions with department stakeholders a Queensland Government position on 
this issue is outlined in this email response. 

If geographic .com.au and .net.au domain names were permitted, set eligibility 
criteria would be required about the registrar and the proposed use of the domain 
so it is not used inappropriately. 

The Queensland Government has a fair degree of experience in the area of domain 
name management and would like to provide its research as a case study to explore 
how geographic .com.au and .net.au domain names could be implemented within an 
eligibility framework. 

Based on extensive market research the Queensland Government has adopted an 
approach that our customers should not need to know the way government is 
structured when they want to do business with us. That means providing easy access 
to government information and services independent of traditional bureaucratic 
structures. 

This philosophy has also flown through to domain naming. 
The Queensland Government conducts regular usability testing and market research 
with our internet customers. In December 2002 we discovered that a large proportion 
of our audience does not try to find www.qld.gov.au using search engines, or 
hyperlinks, but know they want to deal with the Queensland Government and attempt 
to guess our internet domain. Regrettably in 30% of cases they are unsuccessful. 
This may be a result of unfamiliarity with domain name conventions or with the lack 
of intuitiveness in representing the word "Queensland" in an acronym like "qld" that 
has little bearing to the full word for some people. 

In late 2003 the Queensland Government registered a number of domain names that our 
customers had incorrectly tried to find us. In just seven and a half months over 
13,500 customers have been redirected from these incorrect URLs (see attached), 
given a message educating them that www.qld.gov.au is the correct domain name for 
the Queensland Government, and transferred them to the correct address. 

The domain names we registered were based on research indicating where customers 
were trying to find us. Unfortunately we were unable to register geographic based 
domains as a result of current restrictions in auDA policy. 

Based on our estimates we believe approximately 12,500 customers a year are likely to 
be trying to find us by trying www.queensland.com.au and www.qld.com.au. 

This is having a financial impact with an inability for customers to transact with 
the Queensland Government, or forcing customers to more expensive channels of service 
delivery. Based on Gartner research for the cost of managing customer interactions we 
estimate that not having www.queensland.com.au and www.qld.com.au redirecting to 
www.qld.gov.au is having a negative internal financial impact to our government of 
approximately $179,000 per annum, growing to at least $1.17m over five years to 07-08 
(due to reduced channel migration). 

The Queensland Government is proposing that as part of auDA's review, that geographic 
.com.au and .net.au domain names be permitted for registration only by governments 
solely covering that geographic location. Furthermore the government entity eligible 
for registering the domain should be the same entity that has registered the term 
(whether in an acronym or not) within the .gov.au domain space. 

Some guidelines on using the domain could be put in place that governed its use, eg 
as a redirection and education tool so customers learn over time that government web 
sites are in the .gov.au domain space (eg visitors to www.queensland.com.au would be 
redirected to a page to educate them of the correct domain, before transferring them 
to www.qld.gov.au.) A process could be put in place that governments would not 
intentionally market or promote the .com.au or .net.au domain, but for it to be merely 
a redirector of customers to the web site they are trying to reach. 

It should be recognised that auDA's recent moves to create new second level domains 
for community portals based on geographic locations (eg nsw.au, vic.au, qld.au etc) 
mitigates the necessity to consider geographic .com.au and .net.au domains for broad 
geographic portals. 

Recognition should be given that if government is not the owner of a geographic com.au 
or .net.au domain that prominent linking agreeable to the government of that geographic 
jurisdiction should occur. 

I trust that auDA will consider how it can assist educate customers of correct domain 
extensions, whilst ensuring they can still locate the web sites they are trying to find. 

Yours sincerely 
Jane King 
Executive Director 
Smart Service Queensland