Demand for weather bureau to explain how it will fix ‘flawed’ website

The federal environment minister has called the weather bureau in for an urgent meeting to explain how it will fix its new website, which launched just days before wild storms hit south-east Queensland.

Queensland senator Murray Watt, whose portfolio includes the Bureau of Meteorology, said the new website had not met users’ expectations, and encouraged Australians to share their feedback with the agency.

In a statement on Tuesday evening, he said he had met with acting chief executive, Peter Stone, and told the bureau to “consider this feedback and, where appropriate, adjust the website’s settings as soon as possible”, including urgent consideration to improving functionality and usability.

Watt’s intervention came after Queensland Premier David Crisafulli spoke in state parliament, blaming the “flawed” website for failing to allow south-east residents to be prepared for the weekend’s serious storms.

The system that swept through Brisbane and its surrounds on Sunday with destructive winds and large hail left more than 100,000 homes without power.

Crisafulli said Queenslanders were resilient but “preparation is key” and that depended on the information available to them.

“The changes to the federally run Bureau of Meteorology website are not good enough,” he said on Tuesday morning.

“The changes to the website don’t make sense. The website is flawed. Easy access to individual radars have been removed.

“The colour scheme we became accustomed to has changed, and platitudes from Canberra won’t cut it with Queenslanders.”

After interjections from the Labor opposition benches, Crisafulli accused them of “protecting their Labor mates in Canberra over protecting people with good information”.

Watt said he was told by Stone that the bureau was considering feedback and what adjustments could be made while preserving the website’s reliability.

“Australians deserve to have confidence in these important services,” the minister added. “My office and I will continue to engage closely with the BOM and ensure public safety is its foremost priority.”

In a statement to this masthead, the bureau said it had consulted the Australian community over 15 months, with “overwhelmingly positive” feedback.

“A dip in customer satisfaction is expected as customers familiarise themselves with the new website,” it said.

“We expect satisfaction to increase as customers become accustomed to the new website and discover its benefits.

“The radar functionally is just one observation piece of a larger picture, on which we’re continuing to listen to feedback.”

Earlier, Queensland Treasurer David Janetzki told state parliament he had written to Watt to raise “significant concerns” with the new website, describing the changes to colour-coding of rainfall intensity and removal of Caboolture as a locator on the map as “critical flaws”.

“The decision to make the site live on 22 October – just as Queensland and Australia enter storm season – can, at its best, be described as short-sighted, while at its worst, it has put the lives and safety of Queenslanders at risk,” he wrote.

“Any updates to a website as vital and as widely relied upon as the BOM’s must be done with enough time for the public to become familiar with the changes, and ensure that access to critical information is quick and easy.

“None of the changes made achieve either of these objectives.”

Meteorologist Anthony Cornelius from Weatherzone said the storms that ripped through south-east Queensland demonstrated the problems with the rollout of the new website.

“It beggars belief that the BOM would roll out such a significant change to an essential infrastructure service just as the main storm season is about to start,” he posted on social media.

Most criticisms of the new website centred on the rain radar, which Cornelius said underestimated the intensity of the storm.

Professor Liz Ritchie from Monash University’s School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment said some complaints might stem from users’ unfamiliarity with the update, after having long experience with the previous site.

She noted the landing page for the weather radar presented viewers with a map that extended from Africa to well beyond New Zealand – a presentation that at first seemed cumbersome to her.

It appeared to her to have a longer lag time in the information it presented viewers. In an early viewing, she recalls having thunder above her while the radar suggested the squall line was still some distance away.

“People will become more familiar with it. Maybe they could have had a button to let people access the legacy site while they got used to it,” said Ritchie.

New England MP Barnaby Joyce also grumbled that he found the site difficult to navigate.

“It takes a special skill to find a website that was operating perfectly as far as the 2.6 billion hits it got a year and for $4.1 million turn it into what its own employees call a shitshow,” he posted on Facebook on Tuesday afternoon.

With Brittany Busch

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