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.
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
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.
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.
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!
And it ends up being a disaster for the public.
Even if I accounted for the additional capacity to serve a nation of users, I can't imagine the cost being more than $5M.
[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/bom-website-approved-...
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06...
But it seems like the budget for the software was anything else than reasonable and has crazy budget overruns...
[1] https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/?Id=3fd94307-e8eb-1220-4a...
> 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...
I just looked up the cost of the recent redesign of the weather service in my small country of Switzerland. And I don't think more than 10 times the cost can be explained by the size of the country.
The redesign of the website of the website of the weather service in my small country cost about $6-7 million and the project planning was $600'000. It seems like they hired the same company that did the previous website which makes sense since they spent the previous 10 years keeping it running.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/06/mi5-gchq-co...
(Which of course also means that until all eternity the first thing to do when something misbehaves is to try and reset it).
My theory is that the country is just too rich for it's own good. Railway tunnel costs a few billion more? Who cares the invoice will be paid and everyone's forgotten the entire affair soon enough.
In third world regions governments collapse, people get shot and the Chinese government wants their money back.
They have a whole episode that is exactly this.
But seeing Ash reviewing all the previous versions at 3:08, I'd say yes, that's this episode!
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.
This is a _remarkably_ bad attempt to make the complaints look reduced in comparison to usage. Amazing that any organisation would try this line.
Rather, it seems like a bog-standard example of some product designer trying to impress his vice president with dancing monkeys in the hopes of getting promoted (or at least justifying a large expenditure) during a 15-minute rollout presentation. The guy who signs the checks is the only person who matters, he has a short attention span, and he likes shiny stuff. Therefore we get fiascoes like this.
This website was actually the only government website allowed to run google ads https://www4.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboutHouseMag/2015/1... and it has upsells for weather data https://reg.bom.gov.au/other/charges.shtml https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/data-services/charges.shtml
Interesting the paid functionality is on the old web stack "We're upgrading our historical data systems to improve their security, stability and resilience. During the upgrade some data will not be available, we aim to restore full access by mid-2026."
A perfect example of the state of IT in Australia.
sam-cop-vimes•2mo ago
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!
aeonfox•2mo ago
sam-cop-vimes•2mo ago
OuterVale•2mo ago
aeonfox•2mo ago
sam-cop-vimes•2mo ago
aeonfox•2mo ago
dzhiurgis•2mo ago
themk•2mo ago
NewLogic•2mo ago
sam-cop-vimes•2mo ago
[1] https://www.bom.gov.au/website-help