Nominet urged to improve stakeholder engagement

Nominet has been urged to improve its engagement with stakeholders and to clarify its public purpose, in a report completed by former BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons.

Lyons was tasked to assess the governance of the domain registry and provide a number of recommendations for how Nominet, which operates the .uk top-level domain (TLD), can improve its service.

He outlined 19 recommendations.

Notable proposals put forward by Lyons were for Nominet to “extend efforts to effectively engage with the membership” and provide clarity on its public role and regulatory responsibilities.

Lyons said he was “surprised” that Nominet operates without a finance director and advised the organisation to appoint one.

The report was written in October but was only published yesterday, February 4, alongside Nominet’s response to the report.

On the question of defining its purpose, Rennie Fritchie, chair of Nominet, said the registry agreed with the recommendation and said it will “restate the way” it expresses commitment to working for the public benefit.

Lyons said that Nominet was not a regulatory body. On this, Fritchie said Nominet agreed with the clarification and said that its “terminology should be consistent with that understanding in future”.

Overall, Lyons noted that Nominet is a “strong and well-led company”. He added that the organisation’s priority “must be to build a new, more secure, relationship with its stakeholder members”.