Australia spent $100 million on upgrading its weather website, 20x the original estimate

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology spent nearly $100 million upgrading its website, only to release it amid widespread criticism and mockery.

Australia spent $100 million on upgrading its weather website, 20x the original estimate
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Tech and Science Editor
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TL;DR: Australia's Bureau of Meteorology website overhaul cost $96.5 million AUD, vastly exceeding the $4.1 million estimate, sparking widespread user criticism over reduced functionality and poor navigation. Key features like GPS forecast input were removed, leading to public backlash and calls for improvements to restore community trust.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, commonly referred to as BOM by Australians, is a website that receives more than 2.6 billion visits every year and could be joining the list of the most expensive website upgrades in internet history.

Australia spent $100 million on upgrading its weather website, 20x the original estimate 996
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It was revealed that the make-over for the BOM website cost about $96.5 million AUD, which is about $62.3 million USD. That figure is 20 times the original estimation for the website upgrade, which was $4.1 million AUD ($2.7 million USD). While that is an astronomical figure for a website upgrade, BOM has since gone live, and the response from users has been far from good, with the hashtag "#changeitback" going viral since the new website went public.

Users took to social media to criticize the new website, including the new color scheme for the rain radar and the reduction in functionality, specifically the inability to enter GPS coordinates to obtain forecasts for specific locations. Farmers and fishermen commonly use this feature. According to reports, that feature is now gone.

"First you violate expectations by making something worse, then you compound the injury by revealing the violation was both expensive and avoidable," psychologist and neuroscientist Joel Pearson told the BBC. Adding, "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."

Complaints stacked up, with most saying the new layout doesn't feature any guidance on how to use the new site, making it extremely difficult to navigate. BOM heard these complaints, and the website responded with a list of tips. Many users then mocked these tips.

"Terrible! You shouldn't need step-by-step instructions to navigate the site," one post read

The challenges faced by users were recognized by the new head of BOM, who apologized to users. Since the widespread criticism, some parts of the legacy site have been brought back. But that isn't what people are focusing on anymore, as the head of BOM revealed the revamp cost nearly $100 million AUD, which included the full website rebuild and the testing of the "systems and technology that underpin" it.

"The bureau clearly has work to do, in that it has lost community confidence in the new website," Energy Minister Chris Bowen