2020-2021 Annual Report

With such a situation — ongoing at the time of writing — the twin priorities within DNCL and the broader InternetNZ group have been to look after our people and keep .nz and our other services humming.

We can celebrate success on both fronts. My heartfelt thanks to Brent Carey and the whole DNCL team for keeping the mahi going in incredibly trying times. It is a testament to the team’s ability to be flexible and work together that this happened, and that the peculiarities of the pandemic were handled alongside the ongoing work of the organisation. Thank you to you all.

Thank you also to my colleagues on the Board. Anita Killeen and Mel Hewitson joined the Commission board last year and have settled into proactive, insightful and thoughtful contributors to our work in governance.

The coming year will see some long-standing projects come to fruition with the .nz registry and the .nz policy framework making significant advances — though the work will only conclude in 2022/23. 

One significant change I wish to mark is the arrival of Isobel Egerton as Assistant Commissioner. This new role is designed to deepen the organisation’s resilience and breadth of experience. It is an important investment in ensuring that we can rise to the various challenges the environment throws our way. Thanks for coming on board, Isobel!

The Commission’s work remains a vital part of the overall .nz offering. Keeping the domain namespace fair is an essential ingredient in maintaining the trust of our customers and users. And it sits alongside InternetNZ’s policy and operational responsibilities in making sure .nz evolves to meet the needs of our diverse communities. 

To all who have contributed to our work over the year, thank you. We enormously appreciate the partnerships and efforts beyond the organisation and the group to keep .nz growing and improving, alongside the efforts of Brent and the team.

Jordan Carter 
Chair, Domain Name Commission

Our work this year included assisting our local Internet communities with the review of .nz policies and piloting an online dispute resolution service. 

We launched a new website which is also the new home for all our market data. 

We had a 70 per cent increase in requests for help handled by our staff this year. Enquiries grew from 1400 to 2441. 

More people reported domain names associated with malicious or illegal activity for the second year in a row. To better understand these issues, we will be engaging with stakeholders to ask how best to protect New Zealanders from harmful or illegal content in a revised regulatory framework. 

In the coming year, our focus areas will be:

• a new DNCL strategy for 2022-2025, 
• our new online disputes service, 
• the .nz policy review, .nz registry replacement and content regulatory review, and
• delivering our new e-learning function.

The next 18 months we will embed these changes and stay connected to our local and international internet communities. We will be well-positioned to handle many unique online and offline circumstances.

I want to acknowledge our strong relationship with our Board which has been an excellent and productive one. Thank you to all Directors of DNCL for their hard work and guidance. My team equally deserves recognition and acknowledgement. They have been resilient throughout periods of lockdown and remained connected through remote and hybrid work. 

Staff did a lot of compliance work behind the scenes this past year that minimised harm to consumers. This behind the scenes work has proven integral to delivering exemplary services to one another and our stakeholders which has allowed business as usual activities.

I want to acknowledge the team's achievement in being named an employer of choice in the annual New Zealand Human Resources Director awards. A great achievement and public recognition for all their efforts. 

Brent Carey
Domain Name Commissioner

We manually spot-checked 200-300 domain name registrations daily for keywords under extra scrutiny, such as COVID-19 themed names.  

There was a 74% increase in the use of a domain name privacy option. As of 31 March 2021, there were 93,365 names with a privacy option compared to 69,314 a year prior.

Conflicted domain names trended down from 2151 in April 2020 to a historic low of just 1,945 in March 2021. In 2017/2018, when registrations directly at the second level opened, the number of conflicted domain names was 14,677.

Our vision is that .nz is fair for everyone.