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BoM asked to explain ‘what happened here’ after cost of website redesign revealed to be $96.5m
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
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Technology
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More likely mismanagement, miscommunication, rewrites, and incompetence than corruption.
All projects of sufficient complexity overrun their cost/time estimates. That's not even accounting for designers and programmers trying to hit what is likely a moving target.
92 million dollars over cost on a 4.1 million dollar project is not incompetence and mismanagement.
Doubling the cost of a project should have triggered reviews or an audit. 23x'ing the cost of a project is either corruption, or such gross negligence with public funds as to be criminal all on its own.
The 4.1m was the budget for the front-end. The back-end changes were initially budgeted as 31m but tripled in cost as the project dragged on and contracts needed to be extended.