RQ1
Persistence of trust-posture change
How persistent are observed changes in visible mail-authentication, DNSSEC and related trust-posture signals across the .auDO panel?
Research Agenda
Standing questions against which .auDO's longitudinal public evidence accumulates.
Collection tells us what changed. The Research Agenda defines what the observatory is trying to learn from repeated observation.
Version 1.0 · Effective 4 September 2026
Purpose
Questions, not predetermined findings
Daily evidence can identify visible change. Repeated observation makes it possible to examine persistence, recurrence, stability, concentration and change across longer windows.
The Research Agenda does not introduce scores, rankings or conclusions to be confirmed. It identifies standing lines of inquiry that may be treated when the evidence is mature enough.
Research Agenda v1
Six standing questions
RQ2
Infrastructure dependency and concentration
How concentrated are DNS, mail and registrar dependencies within and across .auDO's cohort lenses, and how does that concentration change over time?
RQ3
Frequency and duration of infrastructure movement
How frequently do meaningful infrastructure and trust-posture changes occur across the observed panel, and how long do those changes persist?
RQ4
Relative stability of public signals
Which observable domain-layer signals are comparatively stable, and which exhibit frequent or transient change?
RQ5
Value of longitudinal observation
What patterns become visible through repeated public observation that would be difficult or impossible to identify through point-in-time assessment alone?
RQ6
Governance utility and limits
Where can public domain-layer signals provide useful evidence for technology governance, and where can those signals become incomplete or misleading without additional context?
Research boundaries
Longitudinal evidence earns interpretation
Fixed panel
Findings remain bounded to the observed panel and defined lenses. They are not whole-namespace prevalence estimates.
Cohorts are lenses
Cohorts are curated and sometimes overlapping analytical lenses, not exhaustive sector classifications or rankings.
Observation is not causation
A visible change does not establish why it changed, who changed it, or whether the change was beneficial or harmful.
Evidence before conclusion
Stronger interpretation requires sufficient duration, recurrence, supporting context and evidence quality.
Research questions work with the evidence .auDO has deliberately chosen to collect. A question does not, by itself, justify a new collector, signal family or public data contract.
From evidence to analysis
The questions connect existing observatory outputs
Reports do not need to answer every research question in every period. Evidence is allowed to accumulate until there is something useful and supportable to say.
Daily evidence
Preserves observations and candidate phenomena without turning the daily ledger into an editorial product.
Monthly briefs
Describe what stood out during a completed month and may surface recurrence or persistence where supported.
Quarterly reviews
Provide the primary longitudinal surface for examining one or more standing questions over a useful window.
Featured analysis
Investigates a bounded phenomenon where accumulated evidence supports deeper interpretation.