There’s reportedly new movement afoot regarding the Dot-jobs domain. And for players who pronounced they’d be transparent in their dealings, the moves look more like stealth.

ERE.net reported late Wednesday night that an advisory panel of the Society for Human Resource Management is being asked to approve changes to the charter that governs who gets a .jobs Internet address.

It’s part of a process that if ultimately approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) would open the door for third parties to use the .jobs extension for geographically and occupationally named Web sites. The way the charter is currently written, only companies hosting their own job vacancies can use a .jobs extension, and only after they’ve been vetted by SHRM as meeting the society’s code of ethics.

That someone would want to change the way dot-jobs gets used isn’t the news here. The DirectEmployers Association unveiled that plan in late 2009, and in January, hosted a meeting in Indianapolis to explain how it would work and what it might mean to the recruitment industry. We attended on its invitation.  The association had launched dozens of geo- and job-specific sites in “alpha,” as a proof of concept. But two weeks into February, the sites were taken down. While the association would say only that there were technical issues, it now appears (to us, at least) that it had put the cart before the horse: Evidently, there might have been some concern it couldn’t operate the new sites without first securing a charter change.

The day after the sites disappeared, Employ Media, the privately held, exclusive registrar for dot-jobs domains, filed a request of SHRM to approve of the charter change. If approved by SHRM, it gets kicked to ICANN for its approval.

While that’s news, that’s not what raised our eyebrows. None of the actors in this play has done much to get the word out about the proposed changes, and public comments period closes Friday, April 9.

SHRM posted the notice as a PDF on a new Web site it registered on Feb. 15, called Policy.jobs. The notice bears the name of Brian Johnson, identified as Employ Media’s attorney.

How did SHRM get the word out about its new dot-jobs policy Web site? It linked to it from deep within the legalese of its “Copyright & Permissions” page. 

ERE.net’s John Zappe found the Policy.jobs site and linked to its discussion board for comments. As of Wednesday night, there was only one comment, a few minutes old, from a recruiter who we presume had read the story on ERE.net.

Employ Media, on its Web site Goto.jobs, put up a PDF notice summarizing its requests to SHRM. The document bears the name of DirectEmployers’ executive director Bill Warren, and is dated Feb. 15.  How ERE’s Zappe found it there is a mystery; there were no obvious pointers anywhere on Goto.jobs’ main pages.

We didn’t find mentions of it on DirectEmployers.org.

So, where’s the transparency?

For those of you who remember Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide and the destruction of Earth to make way for a Vogon hyperspace bypass: “All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, and so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any complaints and it’s far too late to make a fuss about it now!“

Read the article on ERE for more background.

If you have an opinion about the charter-change proposal, you have until Friday to lodge it on the Policy.jobs discussion board.