When the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) launched its new website on October 22, 2025, it was meant to be the culmination of years of work to modernize a critical piece of national infrastructure. Instead, it became a textbook example of how a technology project can succeed on paper but fail in practice. The headlines focused on the staggering $96.5 million price tag, but for business leaders, the real story is not about the cost, it is about the costly mistakes in implementation and change management that followed.
The public backlash was swift and severe. The national weather agency was flooded with complaints from users who found the new site difficult to navigate. Farmers were particularly scathing, unable to locate critical rainfall data. The radar map, a feature relied upon by millions of Australians, had changes that made place names hard to read. The criticism was so intense that the federal government was forced to intervene, ordering the agency to fix the website. Nine days after launch, the BOM reverted the radar map back to its old visual style.
While it is easy to criticize from the sidelines, the BOM controversy is a powerful case study for any business undertaking a technology project. It reveals that the most expensive failures are often not technical; they are failures of implementation, communication, and understanding the end-user. Here are the critical lessons every business can learn from the storm over the BOM’s new website.
Lesson 1: The Price Tag Is Not the Full Story (But You Must Be Able to Tell It)
The media narrative quickly became about a “cost blowout” from an initial $4.1 million to a final $96.5 million. However, the reality is more nuanced. The $4.1 million was for the redesign of the front-end of the website, while the bulk of the cost $79.8 million was for a complete rebuild of the backend systems and technology. An additional $12.6 million was spent on security testing and getting the site ready for launch.
This was not just a website refresh; it was part of an $866 million IT overhaul dating back a decade, initiated after a serious cyber intrusion in 2015 exposed vulnerabilities in the BOM’s systems. The BOM stated that “a complete rebuild was necessary to ensure the website meets modern security, usability and accessibility requirements.”
The BOM’s failure was not in the spending itself, but in its inability to communicate this effectively. They allowed the narrative to be about an expensive website, not a necessary investment in securing critical national infrastructure. Environment Minister Murray Watt told reporters he was “not happy” with both the cost and how the BOM handled the transition, saying the agency “hasn’t met public expectations, both in terms of the performance of the website and the cost of the website.”
For your business: You must be able to clearly articulate the why behind your technology costs. Is it a simple frontend update, or is it a critical backend overhaul to address security vulnerabilities and technical debt? If you cannot explain the difference to your stakeholders, you will lose control of the narrative, and every project will be judged solely on its most visible and often smallest component.
Lesson 2: Deployment Is Not Implementation
The BOM successfully deployed a new website. The servers were running, the code was live, and the platform was technically operational. However, they failed to implement it. As we have discussed in previous articles, there is a critical difference:
- Deployment is the technical act of making a system live.
- Implementation is the process of embedding that system into your users’ workflows and ensuring they can use it effectively.
The project team focused on the technical go-live date but completely missed the most critical factor: user readiness. This is a classic example of falling into the implementation gap the pit between a system being deployed and being truly adopted.
For your business: Do not confuse a technical go-live with project success. True success is measured by user adoption and effectiveness. Your implementation plan must extend far beyond the deployment date, with a focus on training, support, and a structured transition period. Never launch a mission-critical system without a comprehensive plan to bring your users along on the journey.
Lesson 3: User Experience Is a Mission-Critical Feature
For the millions of Australians who rely on the BOM website, features like the rain radar are not just nice-to-haves; they are essential tools for making decisions about safety and daily planning. The new design, while perhaps more modern, made these critical features harder to use. The backlash was not from casual users; it was from power users like farmers and emergency services who rely on this data for their livelihoods and safety.
Nationals leader David Littleproud highlighted the severity of the issue, stating: “This is not just about a clunky website, the changes actually put lives and safety at risk. The new platform did not allow people to enter GPS coordinates for their specific property locations, restricting searches to towns or postcodes. Families and farmers could not access vital, localised data such as river heights and rainfall information.”
The BOM’s new CEO, Dr Stuart Minchin, later acknowledged that the agency had “continued to listen to and analyse community feedback” and made changes in response. However, this feedback loop should have happened long before the launch, not in response to a public outcry.
For your business: User experience (UX) is not a cosmetic layer you add at the end of a project. For any system, the ease with which users can access critical information and perform essential tasks is a core feature. If your new system is technically superior but practically unusable, the project has failed. Involve your end-users especially your power users throughout the entire design and testing process. Their feedback is not an inconvenience; it is a critical project requirement.
Lesson 4: Change Management Is Not Optional
The biggest failure of the BOM project was not technical; it was a complete failure of change management. A website that serves millions of users has a deeply ingrained user base. Abruptly changing the interface without a proper transition strategy is guaranteed to cause frustration. The BOM eventually had to revert the radar map to its old visual style and create guidance on how to use the new features reactive measures that should have been proactive parts of the launch plan.
Making matters worse, a scheduled update to the site that was due to go live the week after launch had to be paused due to Severe Tropical Cyclone Fina in the Northern Territory. This meant that critical improvements could not be deployed precisely when users needed the system to work flawlessly.
For your business: The more critical and widely used a system is, the more important your change management plan becomes. A successful launch should include:
- A Phased Rollout: Introduce the new system to smaller groups of users first to gather feedback and fix issues before a full launch.
- Parallel Operation: Keep the old system running for a transition period, allowing users to switch back if they encounter problems.
- Comprehensive Training and Documentation: Provide clear, accessible resources that show users how to perform their key tasks in the new system.
- Proactive Communication: Communicate the changes, the reasons for them, and the timeline well in advance.
Do Not Let Your Next Project Become a Headline
The BOM’s experience is a cautionary tale, but it does not have to be your story. Before you launch your next technology project, ensure you have a comprehensive implementation plan that extends far beyond the technical go-live.
Our Technology Readiness Assessment evaluates not just your technology choices, but your implementation readiness, change management plan, and user adoption strategy. We help you identify the gaps before they become public failures.
If you decide to move forward with an implementation project, the full cost of the assessment is credited toward the project. It is a zero-risk way to ensure your technology investments deliver value, not headlines.
Learn from the Headlines
The BOM’s $96.5 million website saga is more than just a headline about government waste. It is a masterclass in how technology projects can go wrong, even when the underlying investment is justified. The technical work of rebuilding the backend and securing the platform was likely necessary and well-executed. But the project failed at the final, most important hurdle: the implementation.
It failed because the focus was on the technology, not the user. It failed because deployment was mistaken for implementation. And it failed because change was managed as an afterthought, not a core project stream.
Before you embark on your next technology project, look beyond your own boardroom and learn from the mistakes playing out in the public eye. Ensure your project has a clear narrative, a user-centric design, and a robust implementation plan that extends far beyond the go-live date. By doing so, you can avoid having your own controversy and ensure your technology investments deliver the value they truly promise.
References
Braue, D. (2025, November 27). Storm erupts over BOM’s $96.5m website bill. Information Age. https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2025/storm-erupts-over-bom-s–96-5m-website-bill.html
Kennedy, J. (2025, November 23 ). Bureau of Meteorology’s new boss asked to examine $96.5m bill for website redesign. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology-new-website-cost-blowout-to-96-million/106042202
Taylor, J. (2025, November 24 ). BoM asked to explain ‘what happened here’ after cost of website redesign revealed to be $96.5m. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/nov/24/bom-website-redesign-cost-revealed-96-5-m