First published: 31st July 2007
On 1 July 2007, the Hong Kong Policy Bureaux of the Government Secretariat were reorganised. The Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB) was split into the Education Bureau (EDB) and the Labour and Welfare Bureau. This brought with it a domain name change for the Bureau's website and email addresses: emb.gov.hk to edb.gov.hk. The Government, naturally, is managing the change carefully: the old website displays a notice about the change, and the old email addresses are currently forwarded, and a change notice is sent back to the sender.
However, third parties will have to correct email addresses in their address books and mailing lists, and links on their websites, in many cases, manually. Wasting time. Many links will never be updated, they will go dead when the EDB decides it is time to switch off the old domain name.
Back in 1998, Tim Berners-Lee pointed out Cool URIs don't change. Government structure appears to change frequently, the functions do not. Why not use domain names that reflect the functions instead of the transitory bureaux, education.gov.hk instead of edb.gov.hk?