Cost of BoM’s website revamp revealed after deluge of public criticism

The full cost of the Bureau of Meteorology’s website overhaul was approximately $86m, Guardian Australia can reveal, after years of delays and millions in cost blowouts. BoM apologised this week for the handling of the launch of the new website – its first redesign in a decade. It promised to make changes after the environment minister, Murray Watt, said the website was “not meeting many users’ expectations”, and the federal opposition said it had affected the ability of Queenslanders to prepare for recent rains. On Friday, the BoM reverted to the former colour scheme on the radar and weather map to match the old website in response to backlash. The public-facing aspect of the site, which cost $4.1m on its own, was the tail end of an almost decade-long IT overhaul known as Robust, which cost the bureau $866m. The bureau confirmed to Guardian Australia the total cost of the website was around $86m, accounting for public facing and back-end elements. Sign up: AU Breaking News email “Improving the security, stability and resilience of this supporting infrastructure and data was the work of the Robust program,” the spokesperson said. “The total cost of the program was $866m, with approximately 10% of that investment connected to the overall website and its supporting systems.” “The re-design of the bureau website (the interface experienced by the public) cost $4.1m.” The website is supported by a network of technology infrastructure, security controls, data integrations, geospatial viewers and content management systems, the spokesperson said, and receives and displays data from a network of over 7,000 observation assets covering 11% of the globe. The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, said the cost was “unbelievable” and a waste of money. Related: Bureau of Meteorology apologises for new website and promises changes after ‘flawed’ update “Australians deserve to know, why was so much money spent and what improvements were actually made?” “The Australian public, and those who rely so heavily on the BoM website to protect their livestock and machinery during storms and floods, deserve answers.” Consulting firm Accenture received $78m in a contract for the website aspect of the overhaul. 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 on the site – a contract that was originally supposed to cost $11m. Accenture was approached for comment. Deloitte declined to comment. BoM said in response to a question on notice last year that amendments to the contracts were made as a result of “dependency delays due to ICT infrastructure and environment availability, extensions of the contract utilising planned and existing contract options and additional technology integration interface work made at bureau request.” At the time, Greens senator Barbara Pocock pushed the agency to explain why there were no penalty clauses in the contracts to recoup funds from the firms for cost blow-outs and delays. The agency said in response that penalty clauses are unenforceable in contracts, and the performance of the vendors did not warrant remedies. “Robust program contracts, include contract remedies to guide the management of vendor performance,” the BoM said. “These include delay adjustments (often referred to as liquidated damages). These specific financial remedies have not been applied because the performance of vendors has been consistent with their commitments under each respective contract.” Robust was considered critical for the agency after a “serious cyber intrusion” on the BoM’s site in 2015 revealed a range of vulnerabilities in its systems. The BoM only revealed the full cost of the project earlier this year, despite parliamentarians pushing for the release of the cost earlier. Then-CEO Andrew Johnson told the Senate in March 2024 the cost was looking to be nearly $1bn. The total cost of Robust was budgeted to be $788.4m, with the final cost arriving $77.6m over budget. The overrun was met with existing BoM appropriations, the agency told parliament earlier this year. Pocock, who has been interrogating BoM on the project the past few years, said the bureau is a “vital public service” but millions were wasted on the project, which was unacceptable. “There’s a real question here about value for money and whether the BoM’s culture and leadership are fit for purpose for an agency as essential as the BoM,” she said. “We need a bureau that builds public expertise, not one that outsources to expensive contractors delivering poor results. As the climate crisis intensifies, accurate and timely weather information is absolutely critical. “Lives and livelihoods depend on the bureau getting it right.” After initially shrugging off some of the criticism as akin to that faced after the 2020 mobile app refresh – which now records more visitors annually than the desktop website – BoM has spent much of the past week explaining to users how to find features from the old site on the new site. Some of the claims of missing features highlighted by politicians this week, including by Littleproud, proved erroneous once the agency provided links on the site to enquiring media.