The importance of community engagement in policy development: an Australian case study

The Australian Domain Name Administrators have launched a new domain name space designed specifically for community groups to develop community Websites for the benefit of the local community. The purpose of the scheme under which these domains are issued is to link community members through community-managed Websites, and to encourage broad community participation and engagement. Despite broad community engagement during initial development, many changes have since been made to the policy governing these new domain names. This paper presents an overview of the scheme under which these community domains can be used, and identifies the changes made to the policy since it was initially proposed. A comparison of the proposed and implemented policies, and the communitypsilas feedback, is presented. Consideration of the impacts of these changes, made without concern for genuine community engagement, is provided to highlight the importance of community engagement to policy development.