The Nigerian government has no doubt shown continuous commitment and readiness to join the world in promoting digital government.
An analysis data obtained from the Nigeria Internet Registration Association (NiRA), revealed that the registration of the Nigeria’s country code Top Level Domain Name (ccTLD), .NG, grew by three per cent to reach 134,320 from December 2018 to February 2019.
Breaking it down, the number of .NG domain registration increased by 1,197 between December and January 2019, and by 2,123 from January to February this year. The domain name report also revealed that about 14,696 new domain registrations were recorded in three months under review, with 8,411 domain renewals and 280 domain restorations to other registrars.
There were 114,325 active domain names at the third level and another 19,995 active domain names at the second level, 4,772 new registrations, 2,797 domain renewal and 88 domain restorations, making a total of 134,320 domains as of February 2019.
Judging by the figures above, it can be noted that the government has through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), encouraged ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), to embrace the NiRA's .NG project.
Aside government institutions, individuals, groups and businesses have also keyed into .NG domain for their website naming. Thanks to a government that has made buying a domain name as low as N999 for a .COM.NG even though we still believe that one day the .NG which ranges from N8,500 to N10,000 would come down as well.
While the path to making NiRA achieve it's .NG dreams has remained seamless with over 134,320 .NG domains recorded by NiRA in Q1 of 2019, the federal government still needs to make it a tradition for all of its upcoming website projects or online initiatives to run on .NG domain extension.
Everything has a name, and it's the name that makes things stand out from the crowd. In this case, NIGERIA is the name!
When it comes to naming government project websites or any other online government initiatives, we believe that adding government or country identity to the name will go a long way in promoting digital government not to talk of how easy it will be for the citizens to identify the website as a government-to-country affiliated project. With the emergence of Nigeria’s country code Top Level Domain Name (ccTLD), .NG, it's now 100% possible to name government agency websites by their official name or acronyms.
Also the .NG domain extension assigned specially to Nigeria now makes it possible for government to reserve some names to itself not to talk of .GOV.NG extension reserved strictly for Nigerian government bodies or projects.
A government project website named with a .com, .net or .org domain extensions may in the long run have authority or trust issues especially if it publishes sensitive news or information. Imagine naming a sensitive government body like Central Bank of Nigeria as cbn.com instead of cbn.gov.ng, that will raise some trust issues or look suspicious not forgetting to mention the fact the website won't be easily identified first hand as a reputable government institution. The same also applies to naming government website projects.
Case Study: https://citizensportaloninfrastructure.com
While the present Nigerian government has tried tremendously to promote the country's .NG domain extension, it still needs to apply this practice in new website projects it develops from time to time. An attention of the government can be drawn to the latest infrastructure portal https://citizensportaloninfrastructure.com, it launched to showcase the government's investment in infrastructure across the country.#ICYMI The Buhari Administration has also launched a Citizen's Portal on Infrastructure, to showcase the Government's investments in infrastructure across the country: https://t.co/oh16Oqm47l.Find more in the Newsletter https://t.co/vDCYXGCOAa. — PODE (#weASOcial) (@DigiCommsNG) April 2, 2019
My suggestions:
The portal https://citizensportaloninfrastructure.com, is an identity of both the government and the citizens and so should reflect fully in its domain name.How about any of the following:
https://citizensportaloninfrastructure.ng
https://citizensportaloninfrastructure.com.ng Or even make it more authoritative to show it's purely a government initiative portal by naming it https://citizensportaloninfrastructure.gov.ng
Naming the citizens portal on infrastructure any of the above does not only show government's footprints in the path of digital governance, but also shows the Nigerian citizens and the world that government is proudly promoting its own country domain extension and as well helping NiRA further its .NG project.
