Plain Language Awards

Celebrate the stories of our clearest business communicators

Finalist: Best Plain English Annual Report 2021

Domain Name Commission

Document name

2020–2021 Annual Report » Domain Name Commission NZ


Judges’ comments

Deanna Lorianni
I think this report is a good example of how you can create online reports.

I think you do a good job of keeping paragraphs concise and focused on a singular topic. For a website experience, this approach is especially important, and it’s clear you’ve been intentional here.

Emma Fossey
Your paragraphs are wonderfully short, covering only single topics and leading with the most important piece of information. Often these are accompanied by images that visually underscore the nature of their content. Another area of strength is your sentences. They are a good length and are mostly written in the active voice.

The tone certainly comes across as caring, friendly and engaging. It feels like you’re talking to the reader, which is refreshing.

Sheridan Grundy
The report is good with many positive aspects and mostly contains effective plain writing. The information is there as to what has been achieved during the previous year. The target audience will find the information they need.

A lot of work has gone into evaluation and user-testing with the target audience.


Media statement

Being named as a finalist is a welcome reward for the Domain Name Commission. With this recognition, and knowing that our report has had around 700 views since it went online on 29 July, we feel proud to be on track with our annual reporting.

Many small business owners have taken the plunge into the online world recently. The team cares deeply about the people behind those domain names and it’s very satisfying to provide help to people to get online and stay online. Helping people first requires that they know about us and so we put a lot of effort into getting the message out about who we are.

Our aim was to publish a report free of gobbledygook and to have a straightforward clean online page that shows our work and our values. So that we could broaden our readership, we used interesting infographics and statistics to summarise our mahi and, knowing that most people would first engage with our report on their smartphones and through our social media push, we worked hard to ensure that the report was readable on smartphones.

We look forward to continuing to support the holders of the 730,000 domain names registered in .nz and to ensuring good quality service from the 78 registrars providing services to them from all over the world.

Isobel Egerton
Assistant Commissioner
Domain Name Commission