OUCH Taxpayers would argue that the new bom.com is not, in fact, the bom.com
BY: Kartya Vucetic
Yesterday, SMH collectively ruined our Monday morning with news that the Bureau of Meteorology has somehow blown $96 million on their website rebuild.
Having launched last month, it’s a feat made even more impressive by the fact that absolutely no one asked for it, no one likes it, and the only measurable upgrade appears to be the size of the national outrage.
The old site was already borderline unusable, but at least it was our borderline unusable. Now it’s worse, and also absurdly expensive.
This feels like an offence on my childhood | Image: BoM
What was the original budget?
Having originally been afforded a $4.1 million budget, the flashy project has ultimately ballooned into territory usually reserved for submarines, Olympic stadiums, or Sydney apartments with “partial water glimpses”.
According to reporting, the rebuild was mostly designed to streamline BoM’s famously chaotic interface. It’s become a beloved national pastime involving radar maps, unreadable colour scales, and enough dropdown menus to qualify as a psychological test.
THIS! I want THIS iconic piece of architecture again! | Image: BoM
Instead, taxpayers are now funding something that critics say manages to feel both slower and more confusing. A true innovation.
What was wrong with the old BoM?
The old BoM website might have been old and ugly enough to qualify as heritage architecture, but at least actually worked. It loaded quickly, showed you where the rain was, and didn’t cost more than a small nation’s GDP.
Trying to read this has become my favourite past time | Image: BoM
This also isn’t the first time the bureau has copped flak for its digital decision-making. Who could forget the 2022 PR meltdown when it demanded we all call it ‘The Bureau’ (LOL), while simultaneously launching a failed Twitter rebrand? I certainly didn’t.
And while BoM have continued to defend the spend, what they haven’t been able to do is drown out the sound of the nation shouting “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it”.
But if you absolutely must fix it, maybe don’t spend $96 million doing so.
