BoM’s seven-year expertise transformation price $866m – {Hardware} – Networking – Safety – Software program
The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has lastly put a price ticket on its seven-year expertise transformation Sturdy, coming in at $866 million, nicely beneath the speculated billion-dollar price.
The ultimate price was printed late yesterday and got here after years of the figure being withheld from federal budgets and senators, citing cabinet-in-confidence.
Till now, the perfect guess on the cost of the program was “nearly a billion dollars”, which got here from a January 2023 speech by CEO Andrew Johnson.
Described by BoM as its “most bold challenge” ever, Sturdy was created to handle “safety, stability and resilience vulnerabilities” after a 2015 hack, and main outages in 2015 and early 2016.
“Critiques of Bureau expertise, infrastructure and different capabilities recognized that vulnerabilities which had arisen partly due to an absence of sustained funding have been jeopardising Bureau providers,” BoM stated in a statement released quietly late yesterday.
Over the seven years to June 30 2024 when the transformation program “formally closed”, a “complicated transformation” of BoM’s “huge info and observing expertise methods” was delivered.
This system’s formal finish appeared to eradicate the necessity to proceed withholding how a lot this system price, and what funding tranches BoM obtained from the federal government.
“The Sturdy program obtained funding within the 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2020-21 federal budgets,” BoM stated.
“At program closure on June 30 2024, whole expenditure from 2017-18 to 2023-24 monetary years was $866m.”
Equal to about $123 million a yr, that funding purchased new IT infrastructure, networks and information centres, a brand new supercomputer for backup and catastrophe restoration, “improved cyber and bodily safety capabilities”, a brand new web site and a regular working surroundings.
It additionally paid for “main upgrades to observing methods, together with new and upgraded radars, automated climate balloon launchers, flood warning tools and related communications networks”, and “upgraded expertise platforms for house climate and flood forecasting.”
Johnson stated that Sturdy had “delivered safe, steady and resilient info and observing applied sciences for the Australian neighborhood, guaranteeing the Bureau can proceed in its core mission of offering trusted, dependable and responsive climate, water, local weather and ocean providers for Australia.”
“Sturdy has been a rare group effort over a few years,” he stated.
“This very important funding in our nationally important capabilities ensures the Bureau maintains its place as one of many world’s foremost and most revered hydrological and meteorological businesses.
“I thank our workers, companions and suppliers for his or her excellent efforts.”