James Doleman has maintained his position in the development group of referees and will be able to officiate in Heartland Championship games next season.
Adam Morrison has been named in the wider training group along with former North Otago player Nick Webster, who, after giving up playing, has turned his hand to refereeing.
The duo will do lower-level representative games and officiate at the national under-19 tournament next season.
Otago Rugby Referees Association chairman Jim Thomson said it was good for the association to have referees promoted up the ranks and get experience at the higher levels.
Former Otago referee Liam Scanlon has been promoted to refereeing in the ITM Cup next year. He is now based in Christchurch.
Ben O'Keefe, who refereed in Dunedin for five years while studying medicine at the University of Otago, has also made some real strides in the past few years.
Now based in Wellington, O'Keefe had a heavy workload in the ITM Cup last season and obviously made an impression.
He has been offered a professional contract to work at Super rugby matches but will still work on his medical career.
The 25-year-old has made a rapid rise after only starting in the ITM Cup last year.
Thomson said the promotion of O'Keefe and others showed the referee education programmes in Otago were working.
''It shows we are doing something right down here. We are working hard on the basics and getting our referees all working along the same lines,'' Thomson said.
Many Otago referees started their time in the middle when attending a tertiary institution in Dunedin, and the only concern for the association was that referees gained experience and then left the city upon graduation just as their referee careers were starting to gather pace.
Doleman was the latest referee to be moving on as he had accepted a teaching position in Auckland, starting next year.
Thomson said it was tough to lose referees but he said some of the association's top-ranked referees had secured employment in Dunedin after finishing studying.
Otago will supply five referees to the South Island regional sevens tournament in Timaru on December 13, while Doleman is set to referee at the national sevens tournament in Rotorua next month.
