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

Summary

Australia's beloved weather website got a makeover - and infuriated usersGetty ImagesFarmers are angry - they argue the information they need is now hard to findIt was an unseasonably warm spring day in Sydney on 22 October, with a forecast of 39C (99F) - a real scorcher.The day before, the state of New South Wales had reported its hottest day in over a century, a high of 44.8C in the outback town of Bourke.But little did the team at the national Bureau of Meteorology foresee that they, in particular, would soon be feeling the heat.Affectionately known by Australians as the Bom, the agency's long-awaited website redesign went live that morning, more than a decade after the last update.Within hours, the Bom was flooded with a deluge of complaints. The hashtag #changeitback went viral.Gripes ranged from the new colour scheme for the rain radar, to furious farmers and fishermen who could no longer put in GPS coordinates to find forecasts for a specific location.And then, this week it was revealed that the site's redesign had cost about A$96.5m ($62.3m; £48m), 20 times more than the previously stated A$4.1m."First you violate expectations by making something worse, then you compound the injury by revealing the violation was both expensive and avoidable," psychologist and neuroscientist Joel Pearson told the BBC, explaining the public outrage."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."'Game of hide and seek'A consensus was quickly clear: "Please bring back the previous format," one person surmised on social media."It's awful, the most useful features are gone and it's not user-friendly. A waste of taxpayer money," another added.Others said the timing was poor: "Why change it on a day of severe weather?"There were some fans, including one who posted: "I like the new site. The front page is much cleaner". But they were few and far betw...