To dot-ie or not to dot-ie?
31-01-2007
by Emmet Ryan

Users of the government's e-tenders website are being confused by a site with a similar name operated by a Limerick-based company.

The confusion even seems to be influencing e-tenders advertisers, such as Dublin City Council and Kerry County Council, whose websites link to the non-governmental service with a similiar name.

ENN has spoken with a regular user of the government's website, www.etenders.gov.ie, who wished to remain anonymous, and who mistakenly navigated to to www.etenders.ie on Tuesday.

Etenders.gov.ie was developed by the Department of Finance and is designed to help public bodies and private suppliers find and publish tender notices on government and public sector procurement projects across Ireland.

When ENN's contact went to etenders.ie, he found a white page with text boxes for entering a username and password. The user told ENN he entered his login and password for the Department of Finance-run site, but nothing happened when he did so.

Upon realising his error, the user went in search of the people behind etenders.ie and found the website was registered to a company called Segaps Ltd with a Limerick address. Since the user first logged-on to the website on Tuesday, it has since been updated to display a grey background and blue header, and the texy "2B or not 2B? (that is the question)" has been added.

ENN contacted the registered administrator of Segaps, Des Crosbie. He said he found the matter bemusing: "There is no way that you are under any illusion that you are at a government site when you visit www.etenders.ie," said Crosbie. "I can't see how there can be any confusion."

ENN asked what the purpose of etenders.ie is but Crosbie declined to answer.

The Department of Finance told ENN it tried to register www.etenders.ie in 2002 but found it was already registered. "There wasn't much we could do," said Liz Nolan, spokeswoman for the Department.

Government websites use the .gov.ie sub-domain but Nolan said efforts had been made to register dot-ie (.ie) versions of government sites in the past. The web address 'procurement.ie' was registered by the Department in addition to its own online tendering site, procurement.gov.ie.

"I would be concerned about [etenders.ie] but it depends on what they are doing with the site," said Nolan. "We have not contacted the site's owner yet but we will be in contact." Nolan added that the Department had "no intention" of paying for the similiar domain name.

"It's going to be very confusing for a lot of people," said IT consultant and blogger Tom Raftery. "People are linking in to the site thinking it's the procurement site."

On his blog at http://tomrafteryit.net, Raftery also offered the possibility that etenders.ie is a legitimate website which may have been hacked or phished by someone trying to harvest logons from the government's etenders site.

Theoretically, these logon details could provide access to commercially sensitive information.

Tom Raftery's site can be found here.