the new interface cost $4.1 million<\/a>.<\/p>\nBut a search of Australian government tender documents shows that figure might be the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/732511f0330d00b71c301192974b5aff\")
<\/p>\n
The Bureau of Meteorology says the redesign of the website cost $4.1 million. (Supplied: Bureau of Meteorology)<\/p>\n
$78m website software contract<\/p>\n
The ABC understands the government awarded business management company Accenture Australia a $78 million contract to develop the new website’s content management system (CMS).<\/p>\n
That CMS typically includes all the software and digital infrastructure to make the website work.<\/p>\n
The contract, scheduled to run between August 2019 and 2027, was initially valued at $31.3 million.<\/p>\n
It is now listed on AusTender, the government’s tenders and contracts website, as valued at $78 million.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/306cde2e19a887fe72e53773a0db3566\")
<\/p>\n
The Accenture Australia tender for work on the Bureau of Meteorology website. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
The ABC understands additional contractors were assigned to work side-by-side with Accenture staff on the website’s development.<\/p>\n
With double the staff working on the website creation, the content management cost is estimated by sources close to the matter as potentially as high as $150 million.<\/p>\n
Other government tenders were awarded for BOM-related IT projects relating to cloud programs and securing the communication of international data.<\/p>\n
They are valued at about $30 million each, but it is unclear if they are related to the website’s redesign.<\/p>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/6ae0ed7409e167df8ff32d3293275fb1\")
<\/p>\n
The ABC understands the cost of the website cost could reach $150 million. (ABC News: Jo Prendergast)<\/p>\n
Minister questioned<\/p>\n
Reporting by The Saturday Paper and The Guardian also detailed the tens of millions of dollars spent to develop the new BOM website.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, ABC Insiders host David Speers asked Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt if the website upgrade was a good use of taxpayers’ money.<\/p>\n
Senator Watt avoided the question, describing the BOM as a “great Australian institution”.<\/p>\n
“It is really important that taxpayers and all Australians have access to reliable information from the (BOM),” Senator Watt said.<\/p>\n
“I’m very pleased that the BOM has listened to community feedback. I know they’ve got plans to make more changes.<\/p>\n
“That’s what we want, but we also want a really credible, reliable service as well.”<\/p>\n
![\"Murray](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/db542573af6ff0b3dd26026d6abbc0e3\")
<\/p>\n
Environment Minister Murray Watt says it is important Australians have access to reliable weather information. (ABC News: Callum Flinn)<\/p>\n
The ABC has asked for clarity from the Bureau regarding the true cost of the website’s creation, including both front and back-end work.<\/p>\n
The BOM has yet to respond to these requests.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking on the ABC’s Victorian Country Hour on Monday, the BOM’s general manager of environmental prediction services, Matt Collopy, said the $4.1 million figure was correct.<\/p>\n
“The figure that we we put out publicly, that this redesign costs $4.1 million, is accurate,” Mr Collopy said.<\/p>\n
Mr Collopy said the additional figures reported by the ABC and other media outlets were “not accurate in terms of the cost of designing this new website”.<\/p>\n
![\"Silhouette](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/bda30ee0012404f05659be4ef7bb41b5\")
<\/p>\n
A significant IT upgrade has been undertaken at the Bureau of Meterology since a cyber attack in 2015. (Four Corners: Cyber War)<\/p>\n
The changes to the BOM’s website were part of a much larger program to make the agency more resilient and secure.<\/p>\n
That IT transformation program, called Robust, ran for seven years at a cost of $866 million.<\/p>\n
It was funded by the federal government after a cyber attack<\/a> and outages in 2015 and 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Documents have revealed the true cost of the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM) new website could be significantly higher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":252594,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61838,41262,43,44,110903,2185,41,39,42,40,140129],"class_list":["post-262898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-bom","tag-cost","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-redesign","tag-rural","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262898","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=262898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}