{"id":243877,"date":"2025-10-27T10:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243877\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T10:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:11:10","slug":"damage-control-as-bureau-of-meteorology-defends-widely-criticised-new-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243877\/","title":{"rendered":"Damage control as Bureau of Meteorology defends widely criticised new website"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bureau of Meteorology has defended its new $4 million website, after a flood of complaints about the refreshed look.<\/p>\n

The new site went live on Wednesday last week<\/a>, as wild weather hit various parts of Australia.<\/p>\n

The response from the public was swift, harsh and widespread, with social media and radio talkback awash with criticism.<\/p>\n

Five days later, the negative feedback has not abated.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The new BOM website has not been well-received. (Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)<\/p>\n

Upgrade overdue<\/p>\n

Bureau meteorologist Michael Logan defended the change, telling ABC Statewide Drive Victoria<\/a> that the website needed updating.<\/p>\n

“The old website served us really well, but it had been well over a decade since there has been any upgrades to it,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The underlying IT just wasn’t as secure, as resilient and as reliable as it needed to be.”<\/p>\n

Mr Logan said with an IT refresh in the works, they decided to modernise the look of it too.<\/p>\n

“We took the opportunity not just to improve the underlying IT, but also to meet modern accessibility standards and expectations.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The bureau’s new website was launched during a week of wild weather across the country. (ABC News: Emma Pollard)<\/p>\n

$4 million price tag<\/p>\n

Mr Logan said the new website design cost about $4 million.<\/p>\n

It was part of a broader program to transform the BOM’s technology to make it more secure and stable.<\/p>\n

“That [website] cost ranged over a couple of years as we went through the whole consultation process with the community and adjusted to feedback,” Mr Logan said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The BOM site is extremely popular, with 2.6 million views on launch day alone.<\/p>\n

“When you’re getting that many views every day, people are [using] it for so many different decisions, so many different usages,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Old<\/p>\n

The old website had not been updated in a decade. (Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)<\/p>\n

Flurry of feedback on ‘major change’<\/p>\n

The Bureau has acknowledged the new website has been difficult to navigate.<\/p>\n

“It is a rearrangement of where everything is and it is quite a major change,” Mr Logan said.<\/p>\n

“We are getting a lot of feedback around it. We welcome the feedback.”<\/p>\n

Mr Logan is hoping that with time, people will get used to it.<\/p>\n

“They’ll find all the information is still there and they’ll get used to finding that information and also the benefits of the new site itself.”<\/p>\n

But he has not ruled out future changes to the site.<\/p>\n

“We’ll see how much feedback comes through and that will inform what changes,” Mr Logan said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Bureau of Meteorology has defended its new $4 million website, after a flood of complaints about the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61838,43,140584,44,8424,41,39,42,40,1192,140586],"class_list":["post-243877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-bom","tag-headlines","tag-new-website","tag-news","tag-radar","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-weather","tag-weather-bureau"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}