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Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign

abc.net.au

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Re: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign

#81

Post by array_key_first »

strix_varius wrote: post #52
mrtksn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, usually you don't have 11 developers coding 24/7. What you usually have is project managers, account managers etc and then a few people who code every now and then. Then you have licenses and support costs. You can't just code the website, zip the code and mail it to the client. They have many stakeholders like this person needs to be able to show this that persin needs to be able to access this etc because they…

> You can't just code the website, zip the code and mail it to the client. The suggestion that the only alternative to paying $96 million AUD ($62 million USD) for a website is getting one that was "coded, zipped, and mailed" is absurd. > That's why you have thousands of employees in tech companies with seemingly a simple product that you can fully code in a week(at least the user facing part of it). I've worked at S…

For most software I've seen, it's a handful of (really complicated) requirements that balloon the cost by orders of magnitude.

Making a piece of software? Easy! Integrating with one external provider? Okay... yeah we can do that. Integrating with an arbitrary and ever-growing number of third parties?

Gulp.

Re: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign

#82

Post by array_key_first »

oliwarner wrote: post #40

It's extraordinary how far departments (even large companies) will go to avoid in-sourcing work. $AU96M is a small team of developers hired, paid and pensioned for decades . Anyone rubber-stamping that sort of invoice deserves jail time.

Non-tech firms are allergic to making software.

I don't know why. They have seemingly no problem keeping their accounting department in house, even though they're not an accounting firm.

If a core part of your business is software, you are a tech company. Congratulations. Yes banks, that means you too.

Re: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign

#83

Post by asdefghyk »

asdefghyk wrote: post #44

FROM https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/bom-website-approved-... "... "The $96.5 million that we're talking about was not just the front end of the website, the tip of the iceberg that the public sees, but the back end, which sees data flowing from tens of thousands of pieces of equipment in the field, to the supercomputer that does all the modelling, right through to systems that actually forecast the weather an…

I guess some of the endpoints could be supplying critical data . Interference via hackers to these endpoints data could have serious consequences. I have no specific idea actually, but with experience as electronics engineer / embedded programmer .... there probably be some such scenarios .... hence endpoints would need security upgrades .... But I really have NO IDEA about any specifics ...

Re: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign

#84

Post by zipy124 »

oliwarner wrote: post #40

It's extraordinary how far departments (even large companies) will go to avoid in-sourcing work. $AU96M is a small team of developers hired, paid and pensioned for decades . Anyone rubber-stamping that sort of invoice deserves jail time.

The entire bill of the UK's Government Digital Services GDS team is about £100 million a year for comparison.

Re: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign

#85

Post by jiggawatts »

array_key_first wrote: post #82
oliwarner wrote: post #40

It's extraordinary how far departments (even large companies) will go to avoid in-sourcing work. $AU96M is a small team of developers hired, paid and pensioned for decades . Anyone rubber-stamping that sort of invoice deserves jail time.

Non-tech firms are allergic to making software. I don't know why. They have seemingly no problem keeping their accounting department in house, even though they're not an accounting firm. If a core part of your business is software, you are a tech company. Congratulations. Yes banks, that means you too.

I keep saying this to a state department that has several dozen software developers, plus their managers, PMs, testers, BAs, etc... That's a decent sized software company right there, yet they act like they've only just heard of this new fangled internet thingie that they'll get around to getting real soon now.

Re: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign

#86

Post by jiggawatts »

brokenmachine wrote: post #80
retsibsi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I'm a regular user of the BoM website, and from my perspective the old version was absolutely fine. I wasn't one of the people instantly panning the redesign, but after using it for a while I haven't found positives to outweigh the minor annoyance of the change, let alone justify the expenditure. I can totally believe there were some accessibility issues that I was oblivious to, but it's hard to imagine they…

>It was slightly weird that the old website didn't support https It always did if you linked to https://reg.bom.gov.au , eg https://reg.bom.gov.au/products/IDN60801/IDN60801.94768.shtm... https://reg.bom.gov.au/products/IDR711.loop.shtml

Ironically it had HTTPS enabled and set up on the 'www' site as well, but it obnoxiously redirected you back to HTTP if you tried to change the URL. I've never seen that anywhere else, ever.
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