Town IT staff told the Municipal Technology Committee that the town is converting email accounts from a .com domain to a .gov domain, marking progress on an initiative IT staff said will improve security and reduce risk.

According to the IT update, the townhouse migration to the .gov domain is complete and the police department’s accounts were converted and tested with minor issues resolved. The IT staff member said: “My plan as of right now is probably by, mid, August to be a 100% complete with the, .gov transition.”

Nut graf: IT staff said email delivery will not be interrupted; messages sent to the legacy .com addresses will continue to arrive because aliases are in place. Committee members were told that when users log in to Office365 they will need to use the new .gov domain; passwords will remain unchanged.

The IT staff member said committee and volunteer accounts will be migrated after town employees, and that a public notice was posted by the police chief on the department Facebook page. Members asked for reassurance that mailboxes would remain accessible; IT staff said the migration is on the same Exchange cloud server and users will not lose past emails.

Ending: Committee members thanked IT staff and noted the security benefit of a .gov domain. Staff said they will begin converting committee members’ accounts the following week and will monitor for any post-migration issues.