A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide

In the 1990s, dot-gov domains were hard to use because of restrictive policies about outbound links to non-dot-gov domains. Many local governments preferred to avoid them because they wanted to link to private or NGO resources. (If your city or town has a dot-com or dot-org website, this is why.) In the 2000s, technologists advising the dot-gov registry changed this and standardized rules for local government web addresses in order to help “regular” people understand whether they’re on a legitimate government site.