nsw.gov.au

Readiness by lane

Green: nsw.gov.au. Thin bar: Government Services peer median.

Priority fixes for nsw.gov.au

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Enable

   Meta description written

   Observed: The homepage had no meta description.

   Why it matters: Search engines often use it for the snippet under your link, so a clear description can improve click-through.

   What to do: Write a short, specific description of the page for people, not a list of keywords.

   58% of Government Services peers do this. Limit: Based on the homepage HTML delivered to an automated client; scripts that run later were not executed.

   Guide: Meta Titles and Descriptions That Match Search Intent

2. Priority 2 · Harden

   Content Security Policy present

   Observed: The homepage response did not include a Content-Security-Policy header.

   What to do: Start with Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only to see what would break, tighten the policy over a few weeks, then enforce it.

   On Drupal: The Security Kit module includes CSP settings.

   41% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: Payment Security and PCI DSS: What Website Owners Need to Know

3. Priority 3 · Harden

   CAA records limit who can issue certificates

   Observed: No CAA record was found for nsw.gov.au, so any public certificate authority may issue for it.

   What to do: Publish CAA records naming every CA you actually use, including the CAs your CDN uses for managed certificates. Add an iodef contact if you want reports.

   17% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

4. Priority 4 · Harden

   Certificate lifetime of 100 days or less

   Observed: The certificate from Amazon had a 197-day validity period, longer than the 100-day maximum that applies from March 2027.

   What to do: Move to automated issuance and renewal now, while you still have time to test it.

   34% of Government Services peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

What nsw.gov.au already does well

Practices fewer than half of Government Services peers use.

• security.txt publishedsecurity.txt with a contact found.8% of peers
• Modern image formats in useWebP or AVIF images detected.15% of peers
• Structured data presentJSON-LD structured data found.15% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.nsw.gov.au/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Amazon, 197-day validity, expiring 2027-04-13

CDN or edge

Amazon CloudFront

Platform or framework

Drupal

DNS operators

5 self-run or other nameserver domains

HSTS

max-age 365 days

DMARC policy

p=reject

Homepage HTML

188 KB, br

Images on homepage

16 (jpg 64, avif 55, svg 8)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Government Services sites

• form.gov.sg85
• iditena.org84
• politie.nl86
• rijksoverheid.nl88
• whitehouse.gov90

Government Services readiness benchmark