The Australian Government Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) is responsible for the management of the gov.au second-level domain (2LD) under an agreement with .au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA), the industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space. Under this agreement the DTA provides domain administration services to Australian, state, territory and local government agencies.

DTA’s Netregistry gov.au Domain Management Portal will be decommissioned on 1 February 2018.

New domain registration from 1 February 2018

Applications for new nsw.gov.au domains can be submitted via www.domainname.gov.au.

Domain names are still subject to the same eligibility rules, policies and guidelines.

The NSW Government Domain Name Administrator will continue to be responsible for assessing, approving, and being the first point of contact for applications for new nsw.gov.au domains.

Until 1 February 2019, the domain license fee for the registration of new domains will be met by the DTA.

Managing domains from 1 February 2018

The DTA’s Domain Name Administration (DNA) support team will manage domains on behalf of gov.au registrants, including updating name servers, changing contact details and deleting domains.

Change requests can be submitted via www.domainname.gov.au and will only be actioned following registrant approval. 

The DNA support team operates Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm AEST/AEDT, excluding public holidays in the ACT.

Renewal of existing domains

Currently registered nsw.gov.au domain names will be renewed for a period of 12 months by the DTA. The cost of this renewal will be borne by the DTA to reduce administrative burden on registrants.

Other domain name extensions

New websites must not be registered as .com, .info, .org or .net without cluster Secretary approval, including short-term marketing websites.

Website Review and Consolidation

Agencies should consider whether website content can be housed in a section or sub-section of an existing website with an established audience before applying for a new domain name.

In addition, agencies should regularly review the portfolio of websites that they manage and consider consolidating the information contained in these sites. Sites that are no longer required or identified as being superfluous to agency core business should be decommissioned, with content consolidated into other websites or archived.

A reduction in the number of websites will improve the experience for consumers of government information and services.