gov (derived from government) is a sponsored top-level domain (sTLD) in the Domain Name System of the Internet. It is restricted for use by government entities in the United States. The gov domain is administered by the General Services Administration (GSA), an independent agency of the United States federal government. The URL for registration services is http://www.dotgov.gov.

The U.S. is the only country that has a government-specific top-level domain in addition to its country-code top-level domain. This is a result from the origins of the Internet as a U.S. federal government-sponsored research network (see ARPANET and National Science Foundation Network). Other countries typically delegate a second-level domain for this purpose.

Some U.S. federal agencies use fed.us rather than gov. The Department of Defense and its subsidiary organizations use the mil sTLD. Some U.S. governmental entities use other domains, such as com domains by the United States Postal Service (which uses both usps.gov and usps.com for the same website, although it only advertises the com address), and the United States Army's recruitment website ( goarmy.com, this trend is repeated at the recruitment websites of the other branches of the U.S. military).

Additionally, some technically private organizations having some formal association with the federal government make use of gov, such as the Federal Reserve System ( federalreserve.gov).

All governments in the U.S. are allowed to apply for delegations in gov, such as atlantaga.gov for the city of Atlanta, loudoun.gov for the county of Loudoun, Virginia and georgia.gov for the U.S. state of Georgia. This was not always true; under an earlier policy, only federal agencies were allowed to use the domain, and agencies beneath cabinet level were required to use subdomains of their parent agency. There is a lack of consistency in addresses of state and local government sites, with some using gov, some us, some using both (the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania uses www.pa.gov, www.pennsylvania.gov and www.state.pa.us for the same web site) and still others in com, org or other TLDs.

Availability

Use of the gov domain is restricted to government entities. According to GSA guidelines, this includes U.S. Governmental departments, programs, and agencies on the federal level; federally recognized tribes (referred to by the GSA as Native Sovereign Nations, which must use the suffix -NSN.gov); State governmental entities and programs; cities and townships represented by an elected body of officials; counties and parishes represented by an elected body of officials; and U.S. territories.

Authorization

To register a gov domain, a letter of authorization must be submitted to the GSA. For federal agencies, the authorization must be submitted by cabinet-level chief information officer (CIO). For state governments, authorization from the governor or state CIO is required. Domain names for cities require authorization from the mayor or equivalent official; for counties, authorization may be submitted by county commissioners or equivalent officials, or by the highest-ranking county official. For Native Sovereign Nations, the authorization must come from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Naming conventions

The GSA provides guidelines for naming of second-level domains, such as those used by state and local governments. For states, the domain name must include the full state name or postal abbreviation, and the abbreviation must not be obscured by inclusion in a larger word. For example, invalid.gov for Idaho would be an unacceptable domain name.

Policy

Policy regarding the gov domain is laid out in 41 CFR Part 102-173, a Final Rule promulgated by the GSA in the Federal Register on March 28, 2003. [47325]

States in GOV

As of November 2009, all states in the U.S. have operational domains in gov:

Alabama	al.gov and alabama.gov
Alaska	alaska.gov
Arizona	az.gov
Arkansas	ar.gov and arkansas.gov
California	ca.gov and california.gov
Colorado	colorado.gov
Connecticut	ct.gov
Delaware	Delaware.gov
Florida	florida.gov redirects to myflorida.com
Georgia	georgia.gov and ga.gov
Guam	guam.gov
Hawaii	hawaii.gov redirects to ehawaii.gov
Idaho	idaho.gov
Illinois	Illinois.gov
Indiana	in.gov
Iowa	iowa.gov
Kansas	ks.gov
Kentucky	ky.gov
Louisiana	louisiana.gov
Maryland	maryland.gov
Massachusetts	mass.gov
Michigan	michigan.gov
Minnesota	mn.gov
Mississippi	mississippi.gov
Missouri	mo.gov
Montana	mt.gov and montana.gov
Nebraska	nebraska.gov
Nevada	nv.gov
New Hampshire	nh.gov and visitnh.gov
New Jersey	nj.gov and newjersey.gov
New Mexico	newmexico.gov
New York	ny.gov
North Carolina	nc.gov and northcarolina.gov
North Dakota	nd.gov
Ohio	ohio.gov
Oklahoma	oklahoma.gov
Oregon	oregon.gov
Pennsylvania	www.pa.gov and www.pennsylvania.gov
Rhode Island	www.ri.gov
South Carolina	www.sc.gov
South Dakota	sd.gov
Tennessee	tennessee.gov
Texas	texas.gov redirects to texasonline.com
Utah	utah.gov
Vermont	vermont.gov
Virginia	virginia.gov
Washington	wa.gov and washington.gov
West Virginia	wv.gov
Wisconsin	wisconsin.gov
Wyoming	wyoming.gov

References

External links

• IANA .gov whois information
• RFC 920 defined .com and the other original top-level domains.
• RFC 2146 (U.S. Government Internet Domain Names)