Guidelines for Ministerial and Departmental Websites

The Australian Public Service (APS) must maintain its impartial, apolitical, professional nature while maintaining websites. It is important that departments consider carefully the content of their websites and those they maintain on behalf of their ministers.

There are three categories of websites:

• departmental websites
• ministerial websites maintained by departments (either directly or through a contractor)
• personal websites that contain material on a minister’s party political activities or views on issues not related to his or her ministerial role.

There are a range of issues to consider, these guidelines are not intended to be prescriptive. Agencies will need to exercise their own judgement in some circumstances.

Why should I?

Australian Government departments and agencies are guided by the APS Values, which are set out in section 10 of the Public Service Act 1999. The Values require APS agencies to provide high quality, professional support to the government but at the same time to do so on a basis that is free from political bias and political influence.

APS employees and Agency Heads also have defined responsibilities for the control and management of public property and the expenditure of public funds, as set out in the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997.

Staff with responsibility for departmental and ministerial website development and maintenance should undertake their duties with appropriate regard for the requirement to ensure that public resources are used efficiently, effectively and ethically.

What should I do?

Agencies need to determine the arrangement for maintenance of a ministerial website. For example:

• a minister’s office might itself place material on the minister’s website with the department simply meeting the cost of the website.
• the department will place material on the website at the request of the minister’s office, not usually on a case-by-case basis but in line with agreements reached about categories of documents.
• the department will pay a contractor to provide the service of loading material on the ministerial website.

There needs to be a clear distinction between the departmental website and the ministerial one which can be achieve through look and feel changes, or differing domain names. This does not mean that separate content must be placed on each site. The minister might choose to put material produced by the department on his or her site and there will be times when it will be appropriate for a ministerial media release to be placed on a departmental site.

For example, ministerial media release containing a travel advisory warning (normally be released by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), would therefore best included in with other departmentally issued travel advisories. In most circumstances, however, ministerial media releases and speeches would be on the ministerial site only.

Distinction between departmentally funded websites and personal or party political sites

Departmentally funded websites should not contain information about a minister’s activities or views that have no relationship to official duties (e.g. favourite books or diaries of children’s activities). Ministers can establish personal websites at their own expense for such purposes.

Departmentally funded websites should not contain material of a party political nature, although individual judgement will be required.  For example, Ministerial explanation and defence of government policies might draw distinctions between Government and Opposition policies. Such material may be placed on the ministerial website funded by the department. However, material that relates solely to party political issues or that could be categorised as ‘how to vote’ material may not be placed on a departmentally funded site.

If employees are concerned about material placed or proposed to be placed on departmentally funded websites, they should raise those concerns promptly with their minister’s office.

Linkages between departmental and ministerial websites

There may need to be links between pages on a departmental website and a minister’s media releases and speeches on ministerial websites. A link between a departmental and ministerial site may be done in a number of ways:

• a link to the front page of the minister’s website
• a link to the list of ministerial releases and speeches on the minister’s website
• a link direct from a departmental document to the relevant media release or speech on the minister’s website.

Departmentally supported websites may contain linkages to external, non-government internet resources. Departments and agencies need to exercise careful judgement when selecting external links to ensure that the APS values are not breached.

Caretaker Conventions

During the caretaker period preceding elections, departments and agencies should ensure that their websites and the management of these websites are consistent with the principles set out in the Guidance on Caretaker Conventions - (PDF 187kb).

Guidance on Caretaker Conventions  includes guidance on:

• ensuring that websites are not used to support any particular political party
• existing materials that may be retained on websites and materials that may be added
• links from websites
• maintenance of ministerial websites during caretaker periods.

If further advice is required in relation to particular issues that arise during the caretaker period, departments and agencies should contact the Government Division, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on (02) 6271 5399.

Government search engine

A comprehensive whole-of-government search service is available on www.australia.gov.au, which is also available for agencies to reuse.

Ministerial websites managed by departments are hosted in the .gov.au domain and considered to be within the government online sphere. Material on these websites is available to the www.australia.gov.au search engine. In addition, all Senators and Members have personal homepages on the www.aph.gov.au website. These pages are also fully indexed by the www.australia.gov.au search engine.

Since Ministers’ personal websites are not hosted in the .gov.au domain, they fall outside the government online sphere. The www.australia.gov.au search engine does not pick up material on these websites.

How do I?

Branding

The primary way of achieving that distinction is through the use of different livery and branding. The appearance of departmental media releases and speeches should be clearly distinct from that of ministerial media releases and speeches. Departmental logos should not appear on ministerial websites.  For further information, please see the Web Guide.

Domain names

There are three ways to distinguish between departmental and ministerial websites:

• a separate domain name using the minister’s portfolio title e.g. www.pm.gov.au
  (NB: ministers’ personal names cannot be used, according to the .gov.au domain name registration policy)
• a sub-domain of the departmental domain name e.g. www.minister.industry.gov.au
• a separate directory within the departmental website e.g. www.environment.gov.au/minister.

In nearly all cases, ministerial websites will be located in the .gov.au domain name space. There is a strong preference for departmentally sponsored websites to have a .gov.au domain name, but where a minister prefers an alternative domain name for a departmentally supported website, these guidelines still apply.

Subjects:

• Ministerial
• Departmental
• Websites