Title
Authorize the Chair to sign a letter to the .Gov Domain Registration requesting the delegation of the domain names of montereycountyca.gov, montereycounty.gov, countyofmontereyca.gov, and countyofmonterey.gov to the County of Monterey.
Report
RECOMMENDATION:
It is recommended that the Board of Supervisors:
Authorize the Chair to sign a letter to the .Gov Domain Registration requesting the delegation of the domain names of montereycountyca.gov, montereycounty.gov, countyofmontereyca.gov, and countyofmonterey.gov to the County of Monterey.
SUMMARY/DISCUSSION:
.Gov is the top-level domain (TLD) for U.S. government based organizations similar to .com, .org, or .us. However, unlike commercial TLDs that will register anyone in the world for a fee, .Gov delegates domains to genuine U.S. based government organizations through an application and validation process. The management authority is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) under the DOTGOV Online Trust in Government Act of 2020 and legislation enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. The delegation of the domains to the County of Monterey will maintain privacy, reliability, and accessibility through the security measures provided by CISA, and most importantly helps our residents to quickly identify the site as a trusted government site.
The recommended plan to acquire multiple domain names listed is to reduce errors when the members of the community attempt to access County of Monterey online resources. The initial step will be to acquire the domain names with the implementation to be aligned with the County Communications Director’s plan to standardize the county logo and naming by reference that will be “County of Monterey”. Although the changes will be for the county website and email addresses, the actual change can be implemented over time to ensure that that the community will be fully informed as planned by the Communications Director. The changes will not be abrupt, but the plan is to keep the current and new domains and email accounts until such time the county has had an opportunity to properly inform the community. Therefore, it is the recommendation of the Chief Information Officer to approve this action.
OTHER AGENCY INVOLVEMENT:
County Counsel and the County Communications Director have reviewed and approved the recommendation of the Chief Information Officer.
FINANCING:
The approval of this recommended action does not result in a cost to the County according to the update from CISA and .Gov release on April 27, 2021.
__Economic Development
__Administration
__Health & Human Services
X Infrastructure
__Public Safety
Prepared by: Sarah House, IT Manager, 759-6992
Approved by:
____________________________ Date: _______________
Eric A. Chatham, Chief Information Officer, 759-6920
Attachments:
Domain Authorization Letter