5 ms·

$96M AUD revamp of Bom website bombs out on launch

51 points by sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago

joelkoen 11mo ago
> Bom tried to explain that the site's refresh - prompted by a major cybersecurity breach in 2015 A perfect example of the state of IT in Australia.
sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
Not a user of this site but a lesson for all techies about changing something which is heavily in use. Don't expect people to take to it immediately and provide some way to allow people to gradually transition. The site itself looks clean and loads fast but people are complaining that they can't easily find information they used to be able to. Also, the price tag is eye watering!
- aeonfox 11mo ago
  I think the lesson here is to get feedback early and often. Do an open beta from the start, or at least focus groups where regular members of the public can give opinions on the product as it evolves.
  - sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
    Indeed - this should've been easily possible by having a beta subdomain pointing to the new implementation and let people comment on it to get early feedback.
    - OuterVale 11mo ago
      There were beta versions available for years, but most feedback was ignored.
      - aeonfox 11mo ago
        First I've heard of it. Might have helped to not just listen, but to actively advertise the beta via a link on the main website. Pretty standard practice.
        sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
        Yeah - but how does a site which was initially projected to cost $4M AUD get to $96M! A 16x increase! The mind boggles.
        aeonfox 11mo ago
        It's pretty nuts. I want to know where that money went. Something like this needs a full post-mortem, or a Royal Commission as they call it
    - dzhiurgis 11mo ago
      Also how to blow 500M instead of 100M /s
- themk 11mo ago
  The old website was much faster. And you could fit all the information you needed on a single screen. No scrolling. It was great.
- NewLogic 11mo ago
  They do still have the old site live at https://reg.bom.gov.au/ https://reg.bom.gov.au/
  - sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
    Oh - that is interesting! Neither the article nor the new website help page [1] mentions that the old site still exists. [1] https://www.bom.gov.au/website-help https://www.bom.gov.au/website-help
bblb 11mo ago
>It's the government IT project equivalent of ordering a renovation, discovering the contractor has made your house less functional, and then learning they charged you for a mansion. Or rather, it's you and your neighbours deciding to fix your house because it's an eyesore, but then you build a huge unpractical mansion for yourself on their expense.
OuterVale 11mo ago
Discussion from the other day: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign | 119 points, 80 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435
ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
Reminds me a bit of this classic: https://www.satirewire.com/cubists-launch-unnavigable-web-site/ https://www.satirewire.com/cubists-launch-unnavigable-web-si...
killcoder 11mo ago
In South Australia an algal bloom started in ~mid-March of this year, it's a pretty big ecological disaster, probably the worst non-bushfire disaster in living memory. Probably 30% of SA's coastline is affected. It's a pretty big deal affecting many people's livelihoods. The joint state and federal government relief and cleanup package is worth AUD $102.5 million dollars. I hope the public receives that comparison at every opportunity. The old website was frankly excellent, the only problem was it didn't have HTTPS support. I would have happily upgraded that part of the system for the cost of a cup of coffee if I'd had an opportunity to submit for the tender! The new website is significantly more difficult to navigate (for me, a seasoned tech user). The primary thing Dad's everywhere use it for (the weather radar) now requires scrolling to the _bottom_ of the page, and zooming in from the 'map of Australia' to the region you live in. It used to be like, a click to go from home page -> state weather radar with all the info you needed. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology-new-website-cost-blowout-to-96-million/106042202 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology... If you want to read our local news about it. > [BOM] said the cost breakdown included $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the website build, and the site's launch and security testing cost $12.6 million. Absolutely stupid, even those numbers are outrageous. They say it's part of some 'larger upgrade package', prompted by a cyber attack in 2015. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/china-blamed-for-cyber-attack-on-bureau-of-meteorology/6993278 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/china-blamed-for-cybe... But politicians over here love to blame cyber attacks when technical blunders happen. We had a census a couple years ago and the website fell over due to 'unprecedented load' or maybe it was a 'DDOS attack'? The news at the time couldn't decide who to blame! Welp, I hope this gets as much world-wide attention as possible so they can be embarrassed and do better.
- grebc 11mo ago
  Seasoned tech user and changing the link location stumps you? BOOKMARK IT. Things change. Sorry fellow Aussie here and every Tom, Dick & Harry has had their say on this website during the likely 1000’s of committee meetings here. I’d charge 96m to the BOM too to upgrade their old POS website.
- prawn 11mo ago
  (Hello, fellow South Australian!) The painpoint for me has been the loss of information density. 99% of my use of the old BoM was the 7 day forecast showing rain and cloud: former for working outside, latter for photography jobs. Now, at about 800px or narrower the 7 day forecast loses the rain estimate, and all they manage to fit in is day, icon, min and max. The day name could be abbreviated, and the other elements are typically 30px wide. Having to expand each or all days to look for the rain estimate is thoroughly tedious. Among the highlights of vertical space wastage are 130px for a cookie warning, 50px for "No warnings for this location" and then another 110px for heading a table with "7 day forecast" and "expand all". On a large phone screen, it leaves only about a third of the vertical spacing for starting content; the rest is site header and browser chrome!
theothertimcook 11mo ago
Australians will sit and watch their health system shredded, multinationals running off with trillions in resources and pay zero tax/royalties, our poor quality housing and gridlocked cities rank amoungst the most expensive in the world, but will not tolerate anybody fucking with BOM.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- arresin 11mo ago
  It’s so weird. Why not vote differently? Is the media captured?
  - gizajob 11mo ago
    I lived in Australia for a while, and the political system seemed like it was mostly just for show to a greater extent than anywhere else I’ve ever been. In the mould of “whoever you vote for, the government always gets in”. And any big actual decisions where they deem fit to have a referendum such as the change to a Republic in 1999 or the Aboriginal Voice (would have been completely meaningless and powerless anyway), gets nerfed and purposefully mishandled and obfuscated so the status quo remains as it was.
    - theothertimcook 11mo ago
      Well I had never heard “whoever you vote for, the government always gets in” but it perfectly sums up Aussie politics, you're spot on, it's a power sharing agreement between two right of centre status quo preservationists.
  - cool_dude85 11mo ago
    Not sure if it really looms large in the minds of present-day Australians, but they did vote for a left winger in the 70s and got a coup for their troubles.
    - 11mo ago
globalnode 11mo ago
If they hired 3 full time devs at 100k salary each to develop and maintain their website, it would take over 300 years to spend that much money... also unrelated but kind of related - australia spent i think it was over 300 billion for some subs that we'll never get. hot news, if you want free money from people who have no clue, go get it from australia! we are indeed a nation of stupid
- arresin 11mo ago
  Wait the 300 billion has been spent? I thought it was just promised
  - globalnode 11mo ago
    Correct, it hasn't been spent yet. But gov't has had ample opportunity to review and cancel it, even when experts were warning its a waste of taxpayer money.
zipy124 11mo ago
The entire bill of the UK's Government Digital Services GDS team is about £100 million a year for comparison.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  And 96M AUD is about 47.3M GBP so you're not comparing apples to oranges...
lwkl 11mo ago
So according to this article [1] the hundred million is for the renewal of the whole infrastructure including the supercomputer calculating the weather model. If this is true the supercomputer alone costs at least $10 - 20 million. This would make the cost a whole lot more reasonable. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/bom-website-approved-by-coalition-ceo-says/106047518 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/bom-website-approved-...
- latentsea 11mo ago
  So like an 80 million dollar mark up for a $10 a month VPS is in there somewhere?
- plantain 11mo ago
  The new supercomputer was budgeted for 50 mil, and cost 866 million... 8 years late and out of date on delivery. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06/08/inside-the-boms-failings-they-will-straight-tell-you-black-white https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06...
  - nhinck3 11mo ago
    I haven't seen an estimate for $50m for the super computer but guesstimating based off the available specs it's in the ~$2-300m range.
    - lwkl 11mo ago
      The current supercomputer was AUD 50m [1] and HP seems to have won a few expansion and other contracts for another AUD 50 - 70 million for the next few years. Which are all reasonable. But it seems like the budget for the software was anything else than reasonable and has crazy budget overruns... [1] https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/?Id=3fd94307-e8eb-1220-4a4d-a9167fb8755a https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/?Id=3fd94307-e8eb-1220-4a...
      - nhinck2 11mo ago
nickdothutton 11mo ago
In the UK the intelligence services spent £120M on an "information sharing platform" (email + intranet), before declaring after 3 years work that "technical challenges" made it impossible and the project was canned. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/06/mi5-gchq-computer-terrorism-intelligence#:~:text=Scope%20was%20previously%20described%20as,July%20suicide%20bombings%20in%20London. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/06/mi5-gchq-co...
- another_twist 11mo ago
  This theme is covered in the book How Big Things Get Done and the shocking revelation was IT projects have the worst history in terms of cost overruns and missed deadlines. Not this specific case iirc.
  - nikanj 11mo ago
    Nobody will walk to a bridge site and ask them to build twice as many lanes and change one of the endpoints to be in New Jersey instead. IT projects are unique in the absolutely churn of requirements
    - aenis 11mo ago
      That, and computer systems have significantly more states, which makes unpredictable states and state transitions more likely. (Which of course also means that until all eternity the first thing to do when something misbehaves is to try and reset it).
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
  - expedition32 11mo ago
    Everything in my country has cost overruns. My theory is that the country is just too rich for it's own good. Railway tunnel costs a few billion more? Who cares the invoice will be paid and everyone's forgotten the entire affair soon enough. In third world regions governments collapse, people get shot and the Chinese government wants their money back.
another_twist 11mo ago
I think its a bit unfair. Its good that the government spent some money in good old cybersecurity. Maybe 96M is a bit much, but it includes a full rebuild of the system. There should be an audit on where all that money went. Having said that, its quite possible they limited certain query patterns to protect against DDoS attacks. No excuses for messing up a website though. The change should have been gradual with secruity holes being plugged first.
wiether 11mo ago
This shows the genius of Utopia's writers. They have a whole episode that is exactly this.
- dhx 11mo ago
  Are you referring to the 'GovPort' website episode of Utopia, season 3, episode 3 'Nation Shapers'[1] or a different episode? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otJbx-PVOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otJbx-PVOw
  - wiether 11mo ago
    It was the most painful episode I watched, as someone working in IT; so my brain managed to forget most of the details to protect me. But seeing Ash reviewing all the previous versions at 3:08, I'd say yes, that's this episode!
Lerc 11mo ago
User interface changes are very difficult to do correctly. Or perhaps it might be better to say arduous. The principle you should follow, is no-regressions. Everything that users currently do, should be possible on the new system. The reason this is hard is because you have to find out how the system is used. The mistake comes from believing the previous system does what it was designed to do, no-more, no-less. To users, the implementation is the design. If a feature was provided that was not in spec by a developer exercising common sense. reproducing the spec might lose the feature. If the implementation architecture facilitated modes of operation that were not explicit goals, users will use those abilities. Believing your description of the currently used system accurately represents how it is used causes this. You didn't get what you paid for, you got what was delivered. I'm not even certain it is possible to fully discover every used aspect of a user interface, but the worst failures come from not even trying to find out, assuming that they know already. I suspect properly finding out what your current system actually does should consume the vast majority of your budget. If you have an imaginary model of what the system does you will never be able to make a replacement, but people will still assume that their on-paper description is accurate. On paper the new system is clearly better.
cr3ative 11mo ago
> Bom's spokesperson told the BBC it had received about 400,000 items of feedback on the new site, which accounted for less than 1% of the 55 million visits in the past month. This is a _remarkably_ bad attempt to make the complaints look reduced in comparison to usage. Amazing that any organisation would try this line.
- eclecticdt 11mo ago
  Why do you think this is so remarkably bad? I’m not saying I disagree I’m just not sure I understand where you’re coming from and I’m curious.
  - lbreakjai 11mo ago
    Because it implicitly suggests that 99% of the visitors are happy with the website. Without knowing the number of unique visitors during that month, and the number of people that complained, this is meaningless.
  - recursivecaveat 11mo ago
    The base rate of giving feedback on a weather website has to be incredibly low. I've never done it in my life. It's kind of like saying that less than 1% of constituents have phoned their congressperson about Bill XYZ; doesn't really mean anything. If every one of those visits is a page load or something 1% would be incredibly high.
  - Thorrez 11mo ago
    400,000 items is feedback is a very large number.
  - sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
    Not sure this needs any explanation! Most people don't give feedback to a weather site. 400K items of feedback is a tsunami of feedback.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
dreamcompiler 11mo ago
I'm tempted to call this yet another example of enshittification, but I don't think that's right: It's not a money-making platform being squeezed to maximize revenue. Rather, it seems like a bog-standard example of some product designer trying to impress his vice president with dancing monkeys in the hopes of getting promoted (or at least justifying a large expenditure) during a 15-minute rollout presentation. The guy who signs the checks is the only person who matters, he has a short attention span, and he likes shiny stuff. Therefore we get fiascoes like this.
- Maxious 11mo ago
  > It's not a money-making platform being squeezed to maximize revenue. This website was actually the only government website allowed to run google ads https://www4.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboutHouseMag/2015/16.pdf https://www4.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboutHouseMag/2015/1... and it has upsells for weather data https://reg.bom.gov.au/other/charges.shtml https://reg.bom.gov.au/other/charges.shtml https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/data-services/charges.shtml https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/data-services/charges.shtml Interesting the paid functionality is on the old web stack "We're upgrading our historical data systems to improve their security, stability and resilience. During the upgrade some data will not be available, we aim to restore full access by mid-2026."
ChrisArchitect 11mo ago
[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435

51 points by sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago

> Bom tried to explain that the site's refresh - prompted by a major cybersecurity breach in 2015 A perfect example of the state of IT in Australia.

sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago

Not a user of this site but a lesson for all techies about changing something which is heavily in use. Don't expect people to take to it immediately and provide some way to allow people to gradually transition. The site itself looks clean and loads fast but people are complaining that they can't easily find information they used to be able to. Also, the price tag is eye watering!

aeonfox 11mo ago
I think the lesson here is to get feedback early and often. Do an open beta from the start, or at least focus groups where regular members of the public can give opinions on the product as it evolves.
- sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
  Indeed - this should've been easily possible by having a beta subdomain pointing to the new implementation and let people comment on it to get early feedback.
  - OuterVale 11mo ago
    There were beta versions available for years, but most feedback was ignored.
    - aeonfox 11mo ago
      First I've heard of it. Might have helped to not just listen, but to actively advertise the beta via a link on the main website. Pretty standard practice.
      - sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
        Yeah - but how does a site which was initially projected to cost $4M AUD get to $96M! A 16x increase! The mind boggles.
        aeonfox 11mo ago
        It's pretty nuts. I want to know where that money went. Something like this needs a full post-mortem, or a Royal Commission as they call it
  - dzhiurgis 11mo ago
    Also how to blow 500M instead of 100M /s
themk 11mo ago
The old website was much faster. And you could fit all the information you needed on a single screen. No scrolling. It was great.
NewLogic 11mo ago
They do still have the old site live at https://reg.bom.gov.au/ https://reg.bom.gov.au/
- sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
  Oh - that is interesting! Neither the article nor the new website help page [1] mentions that the old site still exists. [1] https://www.bom.gov.au/website-help https://www.bom.gov.au/website-help

bblb 11mo ago

>It's the government IT project equivalent of ordering a renovation, discovering the contractor has made your house less functional, and then learning they charged you for a mansion. Or rather, it's you and your neighbours deciding to fix your house because it's an eyesore, but then you build a huge unpractical mansion for yourself on their expense.

OuterVale 11mo ago

Discussion from the other day: Bureau of Meteorology's new boss asked to examine $96M bill for website redesign | 119 points, 80 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435

ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago

Reminds me a bit of this classic: https://www.satirewire.com/cubists-launch-unnavigable-web-site/ https://www.satirewire.com/cubists-launch-unnavigable-web-si...

killcoder 11mo ago

In South Australia an algal bloom started in ~mid-March of this year, it's a pretty big ecological disaster, probably the worst non-bushfire disaster in living memory. Probably 30% of SA's coastline is affected. It's a pretty big deal affecting many people's livelihoods. The joint state and federal government relief and cleanup package is worth AUD $102.5 million dollars. I hope the public receives that comparison at every opportunity. The old website was frankly excellent, the only problem was it didn't have HTTPS support. I would have happily upgraded that part of the system for the cost of a cup of coffee if I'd had an opportunity to submit for the tender! The new website is significantly more difficult to navigate (for me, a seasoned tech user). The primary thing Dad's everywhere use it for (the weather radar) now requires scrolling to the _bottom_ of the page, and zooming in from the 'map of Australia' to the region you live in. It used to be like, a click to go from home page -> state weather radar with all the info you needed. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology-new-website-cost-blowout-to-96-million/106042202 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology... If you want to read our local news about it. > [BOM] said the cost breakdown included $4.1 million for the redesign, $79.8 million for the website build, and the site's launch and security testing cost $12.6 million. Absolutely stupid, even those numbers are outrageous. They say it's part of some 'larger upgrade package', prompted by a cyber attack in 2015. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/china-blamed-for-cyber-attack-on-bureau-of-meteorology/6993278 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-02/china-blamed-for-cybe... But politicians over here love to blame cyber attacks when technical blunders happen. We had a census a couple years ago and the website fell over due to 'unprecedented load' or maybe it was a 'DDOS attack'? The news at the time couldn't decide who to blame! Welp, I hope this gets as much world-wide attention as possible so they can be embarrassed and do better.

grebc 11mo ago
Seasoned tech user and changing the link location stumps you? BOOKMARK IT. Things change. Sorry fellow Aussie here and every Tom, Dick & Harry has had their say on this website during the likely 1000’s of committee meetings here. I’d charge 96m to the BOM too to upgrade their old POS website.
prawn 11mo ago
(Hello, fellow South Australian!) The painpoint for me has been the loss of information density. 99% of my use of the old BoM was the 7 day forecast showing rain and cloud: former for working outside, latter for photography jobs. Now, at about 800px or narrower the 7 day forecast loses the rain estimate, and all they manage to fit in is day, icon, min and max. The day name could be abbreviated, and the other elements are typically 30px wide. Having to expand each or all days to look for the rain estimate is thoroughly tedious. Among the highlights of vertical space wastage are 130px for a cookie warning, 50px for "No warnings for this location" and then another 110px for heading a table with "7 day forecast" and "expand all". On a large phone screen, it leaves only about a third of the vertical spacing for starting content; the rest is site header and browser chrome!

theothertimcook 11mo ago

Australians will sit and watch their health system shredded, multinationals running off with trillions in resources and pay zero tax/royalties, our poor quality housing and gridlocked cities rank amoungst the most expensive in the world, but will not tolerate anybody fucking with BOM.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
arresin 11mo ago
It’s so weird. Why not vote differently? Is the media captured?
- gizajob 11mo ago
  I lived in Australia for a while, and the political system seemed like it was mostly just for show to a greater extent than anywhere else I’ve ever been. In the mould of “whoever you vote for, the government always gets in”. And any big actual decisions where they deem fit to have a referendum such as the change to a Republic in 1999 or the Aboriginal Voice (would have been completely meaningless and powerless anyway), gets nerfed and purposefully mishandled and obfuscated so the status quo remains as it was.
  - theothertimcook 11mo ago
    Well I had never heard “whoever you vote for, the government always gets in” but it perfectly sums up Aussie politics, you're spot on, it's a power sharing agreement between two right of centre status quo preservationists.
- cool_dude85 11mo ago
  Not sure if it really looms large in the minds of present-day Australians, but they did vote for a left winger in the 70s and got a coup for their troubles.
  - 11mo ago

globalnode 11mo ago

If they hired 3 full time devs at 100k salary each to develop and maintain their website, it would take over 300 years to spend that much money... also unrelated but kind of related - australia spent i think it was over 300 billion for some subs that we'll never get. hot news, if you want free money from people who have no clue, go get it from australia! we are indeed a nation of stupid

arresin 11mo ago
Wait the 300 billion has been spent? I thought it was just promised
- globalnode 11mo ago
  Correct, it hasn't been spent yet. But gov't has had ample opportunity to review and cancel it, even when experts were warning its a waste of taxpayer money.

zipy124 11mo ago

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

netsharc 11mo ago
And 96M AUD is about 47.3M GBP so you're not comparing apples to oranges...

lwkl 11mo ago

So according to this article [1] the hundred million is for the renewal of the whole infrastructure including the supercomputer calculating the weather model. If this is true the supercomputer alone costs at least $10 - 20 million. This would make the cost a whole lot more reasonable. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/bom-website-approved-by-coalition-ceo-says/106047518 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-24/bom-website-approved-...

latentsea 11mo ago
So like an 80 million dollar mark up for a $10 a month VPS is in there somewhere?
plantain 11mo ago
The new supercomputer was budgeted for 50 mil, and cost 866 million... 8 years late and out of date on delivery. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06/08/inside-the-boms-failings-they-will-straight-tell-you-black-white https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/environment/2024/06...
- nhinck3 11mo ago
  I haven't seen an estimate for $50m for the super computer but guesstimating based off the available specs it's in the ~$2-300m range.
  - lwkl 11mo ago
    The current supercomputer was AUD 50m [1] and HP seems to have won a few expansion and other contracts for another AUD 50 - 70 million for the next few years. Which are all reasonable. But it seems like the budget for the software was anything else than reasonable and has crazy budget overruns... [1] https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/?Id=3fd94307-e8eb-1220-4a4d-a9167fb8755a https://www.tenders.gov.au/Cn/Show/?Id=3fd94307-e8eb-1220-4a...
    - nhinck2 11mo ago

nickdothutton 11mo ago

In the UK the intelligence services spent £120M on an "information sharing platform" (email + intranet), before declaring after 3 years work that "technical challenges" made it impossible and the project was canned. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/06/mi5-gchq-computer-terrorism-intelligence#:~:text=Scope%20was%20previously%20described%20as,July%20suicide%20bombings%20in%20London. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/06/mi5-gchq-co...

another_twist 11mo ago
This theme is covered in the book How Big Things Get Done and the shocking revelation was IT projects have the worst history in terms of cost overruns and missed deadlines. Not this specific case iirc.
- nikanj 11mo ago
  Nobody will walk to a bridge site and ask them to build twice as many lanes and change one of the endpoints to be in New Jersey instead. IT projects are unique in the absolutely churn of requirements
  - aenis 11mo ago
    That, and computer systems have significantly more states, which makes unpredictable states and state transitions more likely. (Which of course also means that until all eternity the first thing to do when something misbehaves is to try and reset it).
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
- expedition32 11mo ago
  Everything in my country has cost overruns. My theory is that the country is just too rich for it's own good. Railway tunnel costs a few billion more? Who cares the invoice will be paid and everyone's forgotten the entire affair soon enough. In third world regions governments collapse, people get shot and the Chinese government wants their money back.

another_twist 11mo ago

I think its a bit unfair. Its good that the government spent some money in good old cybersecurity. Maybe 96M is a bit much, but it includes a full rebuild of the system. There should be an audit on where all that money went. Having said that, its quite possible they limited certain query patterns to protect against DDoS attacks. No excuses for messing up a website though. The change should have been gradual with secruity holes being plugged first.

wiether 11mo ago

This shows the genius of Utopia's writers. They have a whole episode that is exactly this.

dhx 11mo ago
Are you referring to the 'GovPort' website episode of Utopia, season 3, episode 3 'Nation Shapers'[1] or a different episode? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otJbx-PVOw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otJbx-PVOw
- wiether 11mo ago
  It was the most painful episode I watched, as someone working in IT; so my brain managed to forget most of the details to protect me. But seeing Ash reviewing all the previous versions at 3:08, I'd say yes, that's this episode!

Lerc 11mo ago

User interface changes are very difficult to do correctly. Or perhaps it might be better to say arduous. The principle you should follow, is no-regressions. Everything that users currently do, should be possible on the new system. The reason this is hard is because you have to find out how the system is used. The mistake comes from believing the previous system does what it was designed to do, no-more, no-less. To users, the implementation is the design. If a feature was provided that was not in spec by a developer exercising common sense. reproducing the spec might lose the feature. If the implementation architecture facilitated modes of operation that were not explicit goals, users will use those abilities. Believing your description of the currently used system accurately represents how it is used causes this. You didn't get what you paid for, you got what was delivered. I'm not even certain it is possible to fully discover every used aspect of a user interface, but the worst failures come from not even trying to find out, assuming that they know already. I suspect properly finding out what your current system actually does should consume the vast majority of your budget. If you have an imaginary model of what the system does you will never be able to make a replacement, but people will still assume that their on-paper description is accurate. On paper the new system is clearly better.

cr3ative 11mo ago

> Bom's spokesperson told the BBC it had received about 400,000 items of feedback on the new site, which accounted for less than 1% of the 55 million visits in the past month. This is a _remarkably_ bad attempt to make the complaints look reduced in comparison to usage. Amazing that any organisation would try this line.

eclecticdt 11mo ago
Why do you think this is so remarkably bad? I’m not saying I disagree I’m just not sure I understand where you’re coming from and I’m curious.
- lbreakjai 11mo ago
  Because it implicitly suggests that 99% of the visitors are happy with the website. Without knowing the number of unique visitors during that month, and the number of people that complained, this is meaningless.
- recursivecaveat 11mo ago
  The base rate of giving feedback on a weather website has to be incredibly low. I've never done it in my life. It's kind of like saying that less than 1% of constituents have phoned their congressperson about Bill XYZ; doesn't really mean anything. If every one of those visits is a page load or something 1% would be incredibly high.
- Thorrez 11mo ago
  400,000 items is feedback is a very large number.
- sam-cop-vimes 11mo ago
  Not sure this needs any explanation! Most people don't give feedback to a weather site. 400K items of feedback is a tsunami of feedback.

deleted 11mo ago

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dreamcompiler 11mo ago

I'm tempted to call this yet another example of enshittification, but I don't think that's right: It's not a money-making platform being squeezed to maximize revenue. Rather, it seems like a bog-standard example of some product designer trying to impress his vice president with dancing monkeys in the hopes of getting promoted (or at least justifying a large expenditure) during a 15-minute rollout presentation. The guy who signs the checks is the only person who matters, he has a short attention span, and he likes shiny stuff. Therefore we get fiascoes like this.

Maxious 11mo ago
> It's not a money-making platform being squeezed to maximize revenue. This website was actually the only government website allowed to run google ads https://www4.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboutHouseMag/2015/16.pdf https://www4.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboutHouseMag/2015/1... and it has upsells for weather data https://reg.bom.gov.au/other/charges.shtml https://reg.bom.gov.au/other/charges.shtml https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/data-services/charges.shtml https://reg.bom.gov.au/climate/data-services/charges.shtml Interesting the paid functionality is on the old web stack "We're upgrading our historical data systems to improve their security, stability and resilience. During the upgrade some data will not be available, we aim to restore full access by mid-2026."

ChrisArchitect 11mo ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033435