Australia/Bureau of Meteorology
 Australia/Bureau of Meteorology     | |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1 January 1908 |
| Headquarters |  Melbourne,  Victoria,  Australia |
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM or BoM) is an executive agency of the Australian Government responsible for providing weather services to Australia and surrounding areas.
Diverting funds away from actually recording weather
The Bureau of Meteorology has been using hundreds of millions of dollars granted specifically for "proactive" maintenance of its ageing weather observing system to prop up the agency's deteriorating financial position and cover cost overruns on major technology rollouts. According to a scathing audit report, it has also failed to account for this money.
The blistering assessment from the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has revealed an agency with missing plans or inexplicable broken promises. It is only meeting between 52 and 79 per cent of its own preventive maintenance targets and there are unresolved work orders on its live dashboards that are four years old.
This is despite $225.6 million in additional funding being made available over three years from 2021-22, and $143.7 million each year after that, explicitly "to maintain a proactive asset maintenance schedule consistent with industry best practice".
Four years after receiving the significant new funding, the ANAO audit found, the weather bureau has not bothered to monitor or report on whether the money provided for maintenance is actually being spent on keeping its billion-dollar asset base in working order.
"The Bureau advised the ANAO in July 2024 that 'no progress update/reporting has been undertaken nor is regular reporting expected' on the 2020-21 Federal Budget funding as 'sustainability funding increases the Bureau's overall base funding levels for capital and operating on an ongoing basis – it is not a discrete program of work'," the audit says.[1]
