Among the many lessons to have come from living and working through a pandemic, one has been reshaping how we operate, investing in employee wellbeing, and growing healthy professional relationships.
Our digital transformation initiatives have been a key enabler of our ability to perform remote and hybrid work and continue to deliver quality services.
We’ve moved from Amazon Lex to Dialpad Telephony, migrated to cloud-based Office 365, showcased a new website, and invested in Agile Kanban to organise our work.
We have continued making headway in our employee well-being efforts this year with bite sized learning, continuous performance management software, flexible working, professional development, volunteering in the community, and unplug mental health days. Our move to new premises will ensure a better physical work environment for a post-pandemic world.
We’ve been deliberate and proactive with building relationships, taking the opportunities where we can to meet up in person or have a hui over zoom to stay connected.
Locally, we’ve signed new MOUs with the Financial Markets Authority and Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages. We’ve met with many fellow regulators and attended a number of online safety-related events and meetings throughout the year.
Internationally, we’ve sustained relationships with our European colleagues through CENTR, Internet and Jurisdiction, and ICANN. We’ve kept in touch with our Asian and Pacific counterparts through APTLD and the Pacific Chapter of the Internet Society. We’ve built new relationships with the likes of the Domain Name Abuse Institute and the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism.
Check out more about our year in review below and in our annual report.
Looking ahead, We have a bit of an idea about what will be happening in 2022 for us. We’ll have a new corporate strategy, .nz rules, and registry platform to implement. For end-users, there will be a wholly online way of negotiating the resolution of domain name disputes and e-learns. We’ll also be welcoming stakeholders to experience our new offices. And importantly what the pandemic has taught us is to leave headspace for dealing with the unknown because you never know what’s around the corner.
As we head into a well-earned summer break, from us all at DNCL thank you for your readership and continued support. Have a great summer vacation! Go to beautiful places, enjoy regional New Zealand, go to the beach, support local businesses, simply enjoy time with friends and whānau. Our newsletter will be back in February!
Brent Carey
Domain Name Commissioner
