The state of Montana, at the direction of the Electronic Government Advisory (EGOV) Council, the Information Technology Managers Council (ITMC) and the Information Technology Services Division (ITSD) of the Department of Administration, will transition to the MT.gov domain for the official state website and Internet email addresses.
This change is being made at the urging of the federal government and the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO). The .gov domain is the only domain that is controlled and regulated by the federal government, thus a website on any other domain cannot be called an 00fficial government website00 About a year and a half ago, the .us domain was opened up so any entity could purchase a domain name, so it is no longer secure for government only.
To give our customers the knowledge that they are on an official government website and receiving official government information, we will be transitioning to the MT.gov domain. This plan outlines the transition and key dates and milestones for the transition. Because the state of Montana is heading into an administration change on January 1, 2005, the EGOV Council recommends all new printed material as a result of the administration change contain the MT.gov domain name. The transition will start immediately and be completed by December 2005. URL redirects can be in place indefinitely for websites, as long as old domain names are maintained and registered.
Transition Information Transition Timeframe: Starts immediately and will be completed by December 2005 Agency Transition Plans: Each agency should develop their own transition plan Agency Liaisons: Each agency should assign a transition liaison, or several liaisons, to serve as a point of contact for agency staff and ITSD; when selecting the liaisons, agencies should consider a technical staff member (such as the security officer) as well as a communications staff member (such as the public information officer); all liaisons will be added to the 00OA ITSD MT_GOV Liaison00email group; this group will receive important information from ITSD and other agency liaisons; see the Liaison Responsibilities below MT.gov Domain Requests: Requests can be made immediately for third level MT.gov domain names (for example: agencyname.mt.gov); requests should be made by the agency liaison, consolidated into one list and emailed to 00OA ITSD Domain Requests00 the deadline for requests is December 31, 2004, requests received by this date will be given priority; host information can be sent later if it is unknown at the time of the request DiscoveringMontana.com to MT.gov: ITSD will work with the Governor00 Communications Director, and other interested parties, to determine the new look and feel of the official state website; agencies that have implemented the Discovering Montana template as recommended will have very little impact when the new design is put in place Inbound Email: Both
