Government watchdog JudicialWatch posted an article today declaring the domain name Change.gov, the location of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s newest website may have been illegally granted. According to the site, Obama’s team initially requested and was denied use of the domain name Change.gov, but the domain was later granted after pressure from his staff.
Judicial Watch points out:
The agency specifically forbids political or campaign information on any “.gov” website as well as any tax-exempt, nonprofit organization that can engage in lobbying or political campaigning. Obama’s change site proudly features the Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501c(4) organization that actively engages in lobbying and political campaigning. The website also uses Obama’s favorite invented term of Office of the President-Elect, which is definitely not an official government office.
It seemed to us that Judicial Watch was making a mountain of a mole hill here, so we looked a little harder at what was presented.
The US General Services Administration (GSA) is the government body which manages and allocates the use of the .gov domain name. It makes sense that campaigning should be forbidden on government allocated domains, but DNN searched the GSA site to find where it forbids this and was unable to find the specific rule. In fact the rules we did found, leave the allocation open for interpretation and flexible.
According to the GSA website the following entities are permitted use of a .gov domain name :
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At the federal level, U.S. governmental departments, agencies, programs, and commissions
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Cross-agency collaborative organizations
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Federally recognized Indian Tribes (for the -NSN.GOV domain)
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State government entities and programs
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Cities and townships represented by an elected body of officials
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Counties and parishes represented by an elected body of officials
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Some special exceptions and requests are permitted
It is likely that the Obama team was granted the waiver and use of this domain under the “special exceptions and requests” . Page 6 of the documents on Judicial Watch (PDF) also point out that the Office of the President-elect is federally recognized and that the GSA is authorized to provide services for this “unique entity that is entitled to government support while retaining characteristics of a private organization.”
Granting the domain seems pretty cut and dry to us, but not illegal. The use of the domain name moving forward may be one which raises some questions with government watch dog groups. However, it was not clear to us where on the Change.gov website any campaigning or lobbying was being done. If the domain is used inappropriately, clearly this should be fixed, but JudicialWatch really provided no concrete proof of any such claims.
The only interesting tidbit I found in all of this was the fact that the request to use Change.gov was made on October 20th, weeks before the election had been decided. It appears that the campaign wanted to use the domain, and this may have been the reason for the original refusal. It appears that once he was elected, the domain name request was approved.
[Thanks to reader Tyger Gilbert of USAWebAdv.com for the tip.]
UPDATE : A user on Digg points out that the letter requesting the domain shows no sign of “demands” or “pressuring”, but merely states that they are requesting a waiver for the use. He also points out that Judicial Watch is headed by Conservatives. No real surprise here.
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