BoM asked to explain ‘what happened here’ after cost of website redesign revealed to be $96.5m

The true cost of the Bureau of Meteorology’s website redesign has been revealed to be $96.5m, with the environment minister asking the agency’s new chief executive to explain what led to the massive cost blowout. BoM apologised last month after the new site was criticised by politicians and the public when it launched. The agency swiftly made changes to help users find functions they were used to on the old site. The BoM’s newly appointed chief executive, Dr Stuart Minchin, revealed on Sunday that the cost of the controversial redesign of the agency’s website was $96.5m – much more than the previously stated $4.1m for the public-facing aspect of the revamp. Guardian Australia had reported on 1 November that the total cost was approximately $86m, after the BoM said it amounted to about 10% of an $866m IT project. Minchin said the total cost “includes the previously stated $4.1m required to redesign the front end of the websites”. Related: Cost of BoM’s website revamp revealed after deluge of public criticism “The remaining cost reflects the significant investment required to fully rebuild and test the systems and technology that underpin the website, making sure it is secure and stable and can draw in the huge amounts of data gathered from our observing network and weather models,” Minchin said. Sign up: AU Breaking News email The federal environment minister, Murray Watt, told ABC News Breakfast on Monday that he was “not happy” with the cost blowout and said he shared his concerns with Minchin. “I’m looking forward to a bit of a change in the culture and the approach of the BoM. And I want to make very clear that it’s an institution and has staff that I very much support,” he said. Watt said he had asked Minchin to determine “what happened here”, and that he expects the new CEO to manage the BoM’s budgets “properly”. “If there are lessons around future procurements that are needed, then we need to know what they are … I’ve got a lot of confidence in the new CEO of the BoM to get on top of this and drive some change.” The bureau provided a breakdown of the costs to Guardian Australia, stating the primary channels platform and website build (writing and testing the data integrations and software based on the re-design) cost $79.8m. Another $12.6m was spent on additional features, security testing and getting the site ready for launch. Minchin revealed the updated cost after he said he had been given a full briefing on the new site, along with the updates that have been made since the launch and changes that are still planned. A scheduled update to the site that was due to go live last week was paused due to Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina in the Northern Territory. Minchin said this update would focus on making the rain radar and weather map easier to use. He said the update would be implemented when the severe weather subsides. The website revamp was part of a larger overhaul of BoM’s IT systems dating back a decade that has cost taxpayers $866m after a 2015 “serious cyber intrusion” exposed vulnerabilities in its systems. Related: Bureau of Meteorology apologises for new website and promises changes after ‘flawed’ update Through Senate estimates, it has been revealed that, as part of that larger IT system overhaul, consulting firm Accenture received $78m in a contract for the website aspect. BoM has faced criticism in the past few years for the nine contract extensions made on the Accenture contract – which was originally supposed to cost $31m. Deloitte also received $35m for its work – a contract that was originally supposed to cost $11m. Accenture was previously approached for comment. Deloitte declined to comment. The Nationals party leader, David Littleproud, said on Sunday that there should be consequences for the cost blowout. “It is unbelievable a private consultancy was paid $78m to redesign the website, but then security and system testing meant that Australian taxpayers actually paid $96m for what was nothing more than another Labor disaster,” he said. BoM has rolled out a number of updates in response to feedback, including changing the radar map to show rain reflectivity as standard, and brought back the old visual style.