The head of the Bureau of Meteorology admits the agency did not properly rollout its controversial website overhaul, but is defending the massive cost blowout.
Bureau chief executive Stuart Minchin faced a grilling at a late-night Senate estimates hearing on Monday after the organisation came under mounting pressure for its website redesign.
The original price tag of the change was $4.1 million, but was later revealed to be $96 million.
The bureau’s website, one of the most visited in Australia, has also faced criticism of not being as user friendly and not properly indicating the severity of storms.
Dr Minchin said the website redesign was part of a broader $866 million security and technology upgrade at the bureau dating back to 2015, with cost blowouts blamed on COVID and inflation.
“This cost reflects a significant investment required to fully rebuild all the layers of technology and system that underpins the website we needed to make sure it is secure and stable and can draw in the huge amounts of data gathered from our observing network,” he told the hearing.
“However, the response to the launch of the new BOM website shows that we didn’t get it right for some sectors of the community.
“We accept this feedback and I’ve personally seen firsthand just how committed the bureau staff are to understanding and addressing this feedback .”
While there have been calls from users of the website for the old version to return, Dr Minchin said the previous iteration was not without its faults.
“I don’t accept that the old website was perfect. The old website was well known by people, but it had many improvements to make. It was also insecure,” Dr Minchin said.
“The previous website that everyone loved was actually not accessible to many people in the community. People that have sight impairment, for example, that rely on text readers to read, it was completely unable to meet those needs.
“It had 70,000 web pages in it, many of which were using language that you needed to have a PhD to understand.”
Greens senator Barbara Pocock said the cost blowouts were a nightmare.
“As a case study of how not to do something really important. We need to learn that lesson,” she said.
“This project has been a nightmare, Harvard case study in contract failure and management of contracts, failure of leadership and completely unacceptable and unethical behaviour by the very big consultants who have been at the trough through BOM.
“There’s been a massive feeding on the public sector by the big consulting firms.”
Environment Minister Murray Watt said there had been lessons learnt from the cost overrun of the website redesign and rollout to the public.
“There are some questions about how this project has been managed. I think many of them predate Dr Minchin’s arrival,” Senator Watt said.
“This may well be a contract that demonstrates the need for greater oversight and of consultants and greater use of public sector capacity wherever possible.”
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