Standards

Basic standards

The following information is excerpted from SAM 5195.1.

Domain names must:

  1. Be owned by a California state entity, county, city, state-recognized tribal government, Joint Powers Authority, or independent local district within the State of California.
  2. Match the organization’s official name.
  3. Be consistent with federal policy and guidelines including, but not limited to, 41 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 102-173, the United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s DotGov Registrar domain policy, and the Federal Interagency Committee on Government Information’s Recommendations for Federal Public Websites.
  4. Explicitly and unambiguously identify the origin of service.
  5. Not be likely to mislead or confuse the general public.
  6. Not be used for commercial purposes, such as advertising benefitting private individuals or entities.
  7. Not be used for political campaign purposes.
  8. Not be used to distribute or promote materials whose distribution violates applicable law.
  9. Not be used for malicious cyber activity, such as activity that affects the integrity, security, and overall trustworthiness of the ca.gov domain.

Additional rules

  1. All websites in the “ca.gov” DNS Zone must contain a direct link to https://www.ca.gov/ and must provide both general information and details on digital services to be used on https://www.ca.gov/.
  2. In case of an official organization name change, the previous domain name must be relinquished when requesting a new domain to correspond with the new organization name.
  3. Each entity shall have only one ca.gov domain (except for approved legacy domain names). If an entity already has one or more domain names, additional domains will not be granted for that entity.
  4. If multiple entities are involved, identify the lead entity and use a subdirectory or sub-domain within the domain that the lead entity already has, instead of requesting a new domain. Collaborations and interagency agreements exist across all state entities; they do not necessitate or entitle a separate domain.
  5. Ca.gov must be the primary domain name even if an agency/state entity also operates non-ca.gov domains such as .com, .org, etc. The non-ca.gov domain or domains can redirect to the ca.gov site.
  6. Domain names for state agencies cannot consist solely of generic terms (such as privacy.ca.gov).
  7. Existing domain names that do not comply with current policies may not be used as precedent for requesting new non-compliant domains.
  8. In the case of a domain name conflict, California Department of Technology (CDT) will allocate the domain name to the most appropriate party at CDT and/or California Government Operations Agency’s (GovOps) discretion. It is not on a first-come, first-served basis.