> Bom's spokesperson told the BBC it had received about 400,000 items of feedback on the new site, which accounted for less than 1% of the 55 million visits in the past month.
This is a _remarkably_ bad attempt to make the complaints look reduced in comparison to usage. Amazing that any organisation would try this line.
In the UK the intelligence services spent £120M on an "information sharing platform" (email + intranet), before declaring after 3 years work that "technical challenges" made it impossible and the project was canned.
This theme is covered in the book How Big Things Get Done and the shocking revelation was IT projects have the worst history in terms of cost overruns and missed deadlines. Not this specific case iirc.
Nobody will walk to a bridge site and ask them to build twice as many lanes and change one of the endpoints to be in New Jersey instead. IT projects are unique in the absolutely churn of requirements
So according to this article [1] the hundred million is for the renewal of the whole infrastructure including the supercomputer calculating the weather model. If this is true the supercomputer alone costs at least $10 - 20 million. This would make the cost a whole lot more reasonable.
> the cost breakdown included $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the website build, and the site's launch and security testing cost $12.6 million.
> “Additional features, security testing and preparedness for website launch cost $12.6 million. This includes the build, test and deployment of feature releases, and performance and load testing to ensure the website can accommodate peak volumes of traffic we see during severe weather.”
User interface changes are very difficult to do correctly. Or perhaps it might be better to say arduous. The principle you should follow, is no-regressions. Everything that users currently do, should be possible on the new system.
The reason this is hard is because you have to find out how the system is used. The mistake comes from believing the previous system does what it was designed to do, no-more, no-less. To users, the implementation is the design.
If a feature was provided that was not in spec by a developer exercising common sense. reproducing the spec might lose the feature. If the implementation architecture facilitated modes of operation that were not explicit goals, users will use those abilities.
Believing your description of the currently used system accurately represents how it is used causes this. You didn't get what you paid for, you got what was delivered.
I'm not even certain it is possible to fully discover every used aspect of a user interface, but the worst failures come from not even trying to find out, assuming that they know already. I suspect properly finding out what your current system actually does should consume the vast majority of your budget.
If you have an imaginary model of what the system does you will never be able to make a replacement, but people will still assume that their on-paper description is accurate. On paper the new system is clearly better.
In South Australia an algal bloom started in ~mid-March of this year, it's a pretty big ecological disaster, probably the worst non-bushfire disaster in living memory. Probably 30% of SA's coastline is affected. It's a pretty big deal affecting many people's livelihoods.
The joint state and federal government relief and cleanup package is worth AUD $102.5 million dollars.
I hope the public receives that comparison at every opportunity.
The old website was frankly excellent, the only problem was it didn't have HTTPS support. I would have happily upgraded that part of the system for the cost of a cup of coffee if I'd had an opportunity to submit for the tender!
The new website is significantly more difficult to navigate (for me, a seasoned tech user). The primary thing Dad's everywhere use it for (the weather radar) now requires scrolling to the _bottom_ of the page, and zooming in from the 'map of Australia' to the region you live in. It used to be like, a click to go from home page -> state weather radar with all the info you needed.
> [BOM] said the cost breakdown included $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the website build, and the site's launch and security testing cost $12.6 million.
Absolutely stupid, even those numbers are outrageous. They say it's part of some 'larger upgrade package', prompted by a cyber attack in 2015.
But politicians over here love to blame cyber attacks when technical blunders happen. We had a census a couple years ago and the website fell over due to 'unprecedented load' or maybe it was a 'DDOS attack'? The news at the time couldn't decide who to blame!
Welp, I hope this gets as much world-wide attention as possible so they can be embarrassed and do better.
The painpoint for me has been the loss of information density. 99% of my use of the old BoM was the 7 day forecast showing rain and cloud: former for working outside, latter for photography jobs. Now, at about 800px or narrower the 7 day forecast loses the rain estimate, and all they manage to fit in is day, icon, min and max. The day name could be abbreviated, and the other elements are typically 30px wide. Having to expand each or all days to look for the rain estimate is thoroughly tedious.
Among the highlights of vertical space wastage are 130px for a cookie warning, 50px for "No warnings for this location" and then another 110px for heading a table with "7 day forecast" and "expand all". On a large phone screen, it leaves only about a third of the vertical spacing for starting content; the rest is site header and browser chrome!
In some ways, poor project management is like an algal bloom or wildfire: costs expand, feeding on other costs, unless a huge active effort to keep them under control is made.
I would have settled for https to redirect to http. Instead, it redirected to a generic page telling you they don't support https, with no way to get to the actual content.
I think its a bit unfair. Its good that the government spent some money in good old cybersecurity. Maybe 96M is a bit much, but it includes a full rebuild of the system. There should be an audit on where all that money went. Having said that, its quite possible they limited certain query patterns to protect against DDoS attacks. No excuses for messing up a website though. The change should have been gradual with secruity holes being plugged first.
Not a user of this site but a lesson for all techies about changing something which is heavily in use. Don't expect people to take to it immediately and provide some way to allow people to gradually transition.
The site itself looks clean and loads fast but people are complaining that they can't easily find information they used to be able to.
I think the lesson here is to get feedback early and often. Do an open beta from the start, or at least focus groups where regular members of the public can give opinions on the product as it evolves.
Indeed - this should've been easily possible by having a beta subdomain pointing to the new implementation and let people comment on it to get early feedback.
First I've heard of it. Might have helped to not just listen, but to actively advertise the beta via a link on the main website. Pretty standard practice.
>It's the government IT project equivalent of ordering a renovation, discovering the contractor has made your house less functional, and then learning they charged you for a mansion.
Or rather, it's you and your neighbours deciding to fix your house because it's an eyesore, but then you build a huge unpractical mansion for yourself on their expense.
Australians will sit and watch their health system shredded, multinationals running off with trillions in resources and pay zero tax/royalties, our poor quality housing and gridlocked cities rank amoungst the most expensive in the world, but will not tolerate anybody fucking with BOM.
If they hired 3 full time devs at 100k salary each to develop and maintain their website, it would take over 300 years to spend that much money... also unrelated but kind of related - australia spent i think it was over 300 billion for some subs that we'll never get. hot news, if you want free money from people who have no clue, go get it from australia! we are indeed a nation of stupid
> Bom's spokesperson told the BBC it had received about 400,000 items of feedback on the new site, which accounted for less than 1% of the 55 million visits in the past month.
This is a _remarkably_ bad attempt to make the complaints look reduced in comparison to usage. Amazing that any organisation would try this line.
In the UK the intelligence services spent £120M on an "information sharing platform" (email + intranet), before declaring after 3 years work that "technical challenges" made it impossible and the project was canned.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/06/mi5-gchq-co...
This theme is covered in the book How Big Things Get Done and the shocking revelation was IT projects have the worst history in terms of cost overruns and missed deadlines. Not this specific case iirc.
Nobody will walk to a bridge site and ask them to build twice as many lanes and change one of the endpoints to be in New Jersey instead. IT projects are unique in the absolutely churn of requirements
That, and computer systems have significantly more states, which makes unpredictable states and state transitions more likely.
(Which of course also means that until all eternity the first thing to do when something misbehaves is to try and reset it).
So according to this article [1] the hundred million is for the renewal of the whole infrastructure including the supercomputer calculating the weather model. If this is true the supercomputer alone costs at least $10 - 20 million. This would make the cost a whole lot more reasonable.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/bom-website-approved-...
The new supercomputer was budgeted for 50 mil, and cost 866 million... 8 years late and out of date on delivery.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06...
I haven't seen an estimate for $50m for the super computer but guesstimating based off the available specs it's in the ~$2-300m range.
No, the entire ROBUST program including supercomputers and what not is actually $866m https://www.itnews.com.au/news/boms-seven-year-technology-tr...
> the cost breakdown included $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the website build, and the site's launch and security testing cost $12.6 million.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology...
> “Additional features, security testing and preparedness for website launch cost $12.6 million. This includes the build, test and deployment of feature releases, and performance and load testing to ensure the website can accommodate peak volumes of traffic we see during severe weather.”
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/premium-prices-for-a-downg...
Part of the challenge is how obsficated the public records are - rather than being called "website" the contracts are disclosed as "Channels Platform"
Deloitte, $4m for design https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/cde4ad08-e9d1-4526-a407-5... Accenture, $79m for build https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/f506481d-0bbd-4776-a3f1-5...
So like an 80 million dollar mark up for a $10 a month VPS is in there somewhere?
User interface changes are very difficult to do correctly. Or perhaps it might be better to say arduous. The principle you should follow, is no-regressions. Everything that users currently do, should be possible on the new system.
The reason this is hard is because you have to find out how the system is used. The mistake comes from believing the previous system does what it was designed to do, no-more, no-less. To users, the implementation is the design.
If a feature was provided that was not in spec by a developer exercising common sense. reproducing the spec might lose the feature. If the implementation architecture facilitated modes of operation that were not explicit goals, users will use those abilities.
Believing your description of the currently used system accurately represents how it is used causes this. You didn't get what you paid for, you got what was delivered.
I'm not even certain it is possible to fully discover every used aspect of a user interface, but the worst failures come from not even trying to find out, assuming that they know already. I suspect properly finding out what your current system actually does should consume the vast majority of your budget.
If you have an imaginary model of what the system does you will never be able to make a replacement, but people will still assume that their on-paper description is accurate. On paper the new system is clearly better.
Discussion from the other day:
Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign | 119 points, 80 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435
In South Australia an algal bloom started in ~mid-March of this year, it's a pretty big ecological disaster, probably the worst non-bushfire disaster in living memory. Probably 30% of SA's coastline is affected. It's a pretty big deal affecting many people's livelihoods.
The joint state and federal government relief and cleanup package is worth AUD $102.5 million dollars.
I hope the public receives that comparison at every opportunity.
The old website was frankly excellent, the only problem was it didn't have HTTPS support. I would have happily upgraded that part of the system for the cost of a cup of coffee if I'd had an opportunity to submit for the tender!
The new website is significantly more difficult to navigate (for me, a seasoned tech user). The primary thing Dad's everywhere use it for (the weather radar) now requires scrolling to the _bottom_ of the page, and zooming in from the 'map of Australia' to the region you live in. It used to be like, a click to go from home page -> state weather radar with all the info you needed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology...
If you want to read our local news about it.
> [BOM] said the cost breakdown included $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the website build, and the site's launch and security testing cost $12.6 million.
Absolutely stupid, even those numbers are outrageous. They say it's part of some 'larger upgrade package', prompted by a cyber attack in 2015.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/china-blamed-for-cybe...
But politicians over here love to blame cyber attacks when technical blunders happen. We had a census a couple years ago and the website fell over due to 'unprecedented load' or maybe it was a 'DDOS attack'? The news at the time couldn't decide who to blame!
Welp, I hope this gets as much world-wide attention as possible so they can be embarrassed and do better.
(Hello, fellow South Australian!)
The painpoint for me has been the loss of information density. 99% of my use of the old BoM was the 7 day forecast showing rain and cloud: former for working outside, latter for photography jobs. Now, at about 800px or narrower the 7 day forecast loses the rain estimate, and all they manage to fit in is day, icon, min and max. The day name could be abbreviated, and the other elements are typically 30px wide. Having to expand each or all days to look for the rain estimate is thoroughly tedious.
Among the highlights of vertical space wastage are 130px for a cookie warning, 50px for "No warnings for this location" and then another 110px for heading a table with "7 day forecast" and "expand all". On a large phone screen, it leaves only about a third of the vertical spacing for starting content; the rest is site header and browser chrome!
In some ways, poor project management is like an algal bloom or wildfire: costs expand, feeding on other costs, unless a huge active effort to keep them under control is made.
And it ends up being a disaster for the public.
Funny enough, I recently stumbled upon an Australian comedy show called Utopia that looks more and more like a documentary now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otJbx-PVOw
The least realistic thing is how many Aussies are employed in that government department.
I would have settled for https to redirect to http. Instead, it redirected to a generic page telling you they don't support https, with no way to get to the actual content.
Another way to think about the price, is that it's slightly less than we spend per day on the NDIS(~126 million)
No wonder One Nation (and, soon, White Australia) are surging recently. People are sick to death of this, looking to the extremes for any alternative.
Seasoned tech user and changing the link location stumps you? BOOKMARK IT. Things change.
Sorry fellow Aussie here and every Tom, Dick & Harry has had their say on this website during the likely 1000’s of committee meetings here.
I’d charge 96m to the BOM too to upgrade their old POS website.
Reminds me a bit of this classic: https://www.satirewire.com/cubists-launch-unnavigable-web-si...
This shows the genius of Utopia's writers.
They have a whole episode that is exactly this.
Are you referring to the 'GovPort' website episode of Utopia, season 3, episode 3 'Nation Shapers'[1] or a different episode?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otJbx-PVOw
It was the most painful episode I watched, as someone working in IT; so my brain managed to forget most of the details to protect me.
But seeing Ash reviewing all the previous versions at 3:08, I'd say yes, that's this episode!
I think its a bit unfair. Its good that the government spent some money in good old cybersecurity. Maybe 96M is a bit much, but it includes a full rebuild of the system. There should be an audit on where all that money went. Having said that, its quite possible they limited certain query patterns to protect against DDoS attacks. No excuses for messing up a website though. The change should have been gradual with secruity holes being plugged first.
Not a user of this site but a lesson for all techies about changing something which is heavily in use. Don't expect people to take to it immediately and provide some way to allow people to gradually transition.
The site itself looks clean and loads fast but people are complaining that they can't easily find information they used to be able to.
Also, the price tag is eye watering!
They do still have the old site live at https://reg.bom.gov.au/
I think the lesson here is to get feedback early and often. Do an open beta from the start, or at least focus groups where regular members of the public can give opinions on the product as it evolves.
Indeed - this should've been easily possible by having a beta subdomain pointing to the new implementation and let people comment on it to get early feedback.
There were beta versions available for years, but most feedback was ignored.
First I've heard of it. Might have helped to not just listen, but to actively advertise the beta via a link on the main website. Pretty standard practice.
Yeah - but how does a site which was initially projected to cost $4M AUD get to $96M! A 16x increase! The mind boggles.
It's pretty nuts. I want to know where that money went. Something like this needs a full post-mortem, or a Royal Commission as they call it
Also how to blow 500M instead of 100M /s
The old website was much faster. And you could fit all the information you needed on a single screen. No scrolling. It was great.
>It's the government IT project equivalent of ordering a renovation, discovering the contractor has made your house less functional, and then learning they charged you for a mansion.
Or rather, it's you and your neighbours deciding to fix your house because it's an eyesore, but then you build a huge unpractical mansion for yourself on their expense.
The entire bill of the UK's Government Digital Services GDS team is about £100 million a year for comparison.
And 96M AUD is about 47.3M GBP so you're not comparing apples to oranges...
Australians will sit and watch their health system shredded, multinationals running off with trillions in resources and pay zero tax/royalties, our poor quality housing and gridlocked cities rank amoungst the most expensive in the world, but will not tolerate anybody fucking with BOM.
If they hired 3 full time devs at 100k salary each to develop and maintain their website, it would take over 300 years to spend that much money... also unrelated but kind of related - australia spent i think it was over 300 billion for some subs that we'll never get. hot news, if you want free money from people who have no clue, go get it from australia! we are indeed a nation of stupid