.gov being ignored by government entities?

[draggar]

I was watching the news conference on the disturbance over Hispañola and I noticed that they were promoting the site Broward.org (for Broward county (Ft Lauderdale etc..)) and not Broward.gov.

So, I went to Broward.gov and it didn't resolve - the domain isn't being used. I thought it was odd but not too overly concerning. So, I checked fl.gov - not being used and florida.gov which is also not being used.

Why are municipalities ignoring .gov TLDs when (as far as I know in my experiences way in the past) they are available to them and would make the site look official to someone who wasn't sure if it was an official site or not? Yes, it is good that they have Broward.org but they could point that to the .gov site.

Is there a cost issue with it other than a reg fee?

 

[katherine]

I think the annual fee for .gov now is $125. It is no longer free for govt agencies.

Actually quite a few entities have moved from .us to .gov.
For example www.state.nv.us redirects to www.nv.gov. Some states are still with a .us subdomain, while others are using .com (Florida: www.state.fl.us => www.myflorida.com). There are no government naming standards really.

I think the US has a TLD dilution problem, because there is not one, but several
TLDs available: .gov .mil .us and of course .edu which is overwhelming American. I think this is one of the reasons why .us is not seen as the national extension, unlike all other developed countries.

 

[stock_post]

Why the outrageous fee!