State of Connecticut Office of Policy and Management

Domain Name Registration and Usage

Version: 1.1
Date Issued (revised): December 9, 2019
Date Effective: immediately
Supersedes: Version 1.0 March 30, 1999

Reason for Change: Eliminated all references to the Department of Information Technology (DOIT).

 

Purpose

The Office of Policy and Management has established this policy and reporting requirements, and associated standards to ensure uniformity in access to State agency resources available on the World Wide Web by promoting a common URL address format for agency domain names.

The use of a common format for domain names will:

  1. Facilitate locating State of Connecticut agency web based resources;
  2. Reduce the overhead in managing domain names and URL assignments for State agency web sites; and
  3. Ensure that public users and State employees can easily recognize when they are on official State of Connecticut web sites.

Policy Statements

  1. Agencies will only obtain domain names for official web sites through the Department of Administrative Services, Bureau of Enterprise Systems and Technology (DAS-BEST).
  2. DAS-BEST will assign a domain name to an agency using the following format - ct.gov/acronym - where acronym is the agency's nominal abbreviation or acronym, or a program abbreviation or acronym.
  3. Domain names ending in .org, .com or .net will not be assigned by DAS-BEST or registered by an agency without the prior express written permission of the Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Agency Planning and Reporting Responsibilities

Planning:

Agencies who wish to register a domain name should contact DAS-BEST.

Implementation:

  1. This policy applies to all new domain name registrations.
  2. Agency web sites are to be hosted through DAS-BEST (see policy on Implementation and Deployment of State Agency Internet and Extranet Sites)

Scope

This policy applies to the following entities: any State of Connecticut agency, institution, office, department, commission, council or instrumentality that utilizes Internet web sites or web pages in the conduct of its business.

This policy applies to any official State of Connecticut website and its associated pages are developed by, or for, a State Agency.

Definitions

State Agency:
see scope above