The
World
Meteorological Organisation
website
describes Dr.
Andrew Johnson
as;
CEO
and Director of Meteorology at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
He joined the Bureau in late 2016 and was reappointed for a further
five-year team in 2021. He is also Australia’s permanent
representative to the World Meteorological Organisation in Geneva.
Andrew has held several non-executive directorships across a range of
domains in the private, government owned corporation and
not-for-profit sectors, both in Australia and internationally. He has
a PhD from the University of Queensland and a Masters from the
Kennedy School at Harvard University where he was a Rotary Foundation
scholar. Andrew is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology &
Engineering and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
What
the website neglects to say can be found in two September 2024 media
articles and one February 2024 legal judgment, which laid bare the
disintegrating organisational structure of the once almost universally well-respected
Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the part played by senior executives.
The Saturday Paper, 7 September 2024:
Late
last month, Dr Andrew Johnson brought together the entire staff of
the Bureau of Meteorology. It was intended as a town hall-style
meeting to thank them for making it to the other end of a $1 billion,
seven-year overhaul of the organisation.
Instead,
the beleaguered chief executive told them the landmark project –
designed to update the observing equipment, security and resilience
of the agency – was a year past due, not close to being finished,
over budget by at least $150 million, likely more, and that the
bureau was now essentially broke.
At
the same time, redundancies were being quietly offered across the
agency.
At
the beginning of the almost two-hour-long “strategy and focus”
session, staff were reminded by general manager of communications Tim
McLean that the presentation was an “internal bureau event” and
its content marked “official: sensitive”.
The
Saturday Paper has obtained an audio recording of the entire address
that was leaked, a source says, because of an enduring
dissatisfaction with the leadership of the agency and its alleged
mishandling of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of contracts
relating to the internal transformation program known as Robust.
Over
the past two years, dozens of Bureau of Meteorology employees have
spoken to this newspaper about their concerns relating to the
umbrella project, which seemed to them to have been plagued by
delays, cost blowouts and waste. Now they have some confirmation.
In
his address, Johnson seemed keen for applause when his presentation
over teleconference concluded. He was met with silence.....
“And
now the agency is broke according to our management,” a source
says, “and APS staff are cleaning up the unfinished and in many
cases not-up-to-requirements work left behind by the contractors.”
Another
source queries whether, even now, the figures and details finally
being released are correct. Take, for example, Johnson’s claim that
the entire Robust program of work was a year late and “as at 30
June, 10 per cent more than what we budgeted for when we did the
budget in 2017”.
This
week, a day after being sent questions by The Saturday Paper, the
bureau released a media statement claiming the Robust work cost $866
million to June 30. In the leaked address to all staff, the project
leader in charge of Robust was clear that the work was never
finished: they just renamed it.
The
work that wasn’t finalised under Robust will now happen over the
next year as part of the “Robust transition program” at
additional cost in terms of budget and delayed dependent upgrades....
The
list of upgrades and enhancements supposed to have been delivered but
that have not yet been finalised is long. It includes the
Australis-II supercomputer, a second and vastly more powerful bureau
supercomputer that is now more than six years overdue. Although it
has been brought “online” and publicly announced as having been
delivered just weeks ago, the machine is still being tested.
“And
so the program definitely had its challenges, and there are a few
outstanding scope that we still need to deliver, and they’re now
wrapped up in what we’re calling the Robust transition program, and
that program has been established to complete the remaining scope
that we set out in the business case,” Robust program director
Nichole Brinsmead told staff during the presentation.
“That
includes things like finalising the tsunami [warning] replacement
project, finalising the flood [warning] upgrade, completing the
testing of the new supercomputer, which has dependency on the MTU
[maximum transmission unit] upgrade and moving our model production
capability into the new data centre.
“There’s
also the finalisation of the AWS [automatic weather stations], so we
need to get to the point where we’ve actually completed all the
testing of the new AWS local processing unit, and then we could
commence rollout there. And there’s a few other components in there
as well. There’s some data management, data platform capability
that needs to be complete. And we’ve also had to set up a separate
capability to support the primary weather services and the
visualisation capability for our operational forecasting.”
A
new website for the bureau, delivered almost two years late, is now
public for beta testing and will be launched into full production
next year. Contracts for that service, which went to Accenture for a
sum of $31 million in 2019, were extended for a ninth time on July 22
and more than doubled in cost to $75 million. Similarly, costs for a
data integration platform tripled from $11 million to $35 million and
the contract for a data management platform more than quadrupled in
fees to $67 million.
“We
all know the public trusts us, but that trust is contingent on being
able to continue providing the service they trust. And under our
current management, they’re obsessed with optics not output.”
These
cost blowouts were attributed to “dependent delays due to the
availability of ICT infrastructure” or additional work made at the
bureau’s request. In other words, the failure to complete one
Robust program measure had flow-on effects and caused delays and cost
overruns in other related matters.
As
previously reported by The Saturday Paper, the ongoing inability to
launch the new supercomputer Australis-II from 2018 torpedoed efforts
by the Bureau of Meteorology to introduce its promised 2019 release
of the latest forecast simulation model, the Australian Parallel
Suite 4 (APS4), a powerful upgrade from the current APS3 version.
That
work was abandoned. Similarly, BoM researchers noted earlier this
year that their own work on the Australian Fire Danger Rating System
could not be verified in real time because Australis-II was not
ready.....
Meteorologists
have told The Saturday Paper these changes and various edicts from on
high have led to a loss of local forecaster knowledge, and have
confirmed that ordinary forecasts had reduced in quality because
bureau management had not sanctioned experienced meteorologists to
take small amounts of time to fix known errors in the automatic model
outputs.
As
these decisions accumulated, Robust projects hit serious delays that
rippled through the organisation. During this, Johnson pressed the
button on a Bureau of Meteorology rebrand that he claimed was not a
rebrand but a “brand refresh”. All internal documents said
otherwise.
The
million-dollar operation was launched in October 2022 and included a
new logo designed under Johnson’s direction and a ridiculed new
directive that media and staff should no longer refer to the “BoM”
but only to “the Bureau”. Part of the cost was attributed to the
hiring of an external PR firm, The C Word Communications. The C Word
founder, Jack Walden, was then hired as a general manager in the
comms division. He stayed on for almost three years but has been made
redundant.
Meteorologists
were furious the rebrand happened at all, especially as it sucked
crucial resources out of a strapped organisation in the middle of a
run of severe weather.
Now,
Johnson has come as close to apologising for the saga as he ever has.
“Clearly,
we took a lot of learnings out of the brand refresh process,” he
told staff.
“It
didn’t go as well as we’d have liked. We’ve learned. We’ve
learned deeply and reflected deeply on that, on that process.”
The
fiasco sharpened attention on the BoM. Johnson concedes the criticism
hurt.
“I
know from time to time there’s negative commentary about what it is
we do,” he said.
“And
I know many of us feel that when we see things written in the
newspapers.....
In
the Federal Circuit Court case, staff found confirmation of something
they’d long feared: that management were not being honest with them
about the state of the organisation.
“If
they’re willing to mislead the court, they’re not too fussed
about telling us the truth are they,” one BoM employee says.
“Everything is waved away or minimised.”....
In
a world where consequences are slim, BoM staff don’t expect any
from this saga or the failures of the Robust program. According to an
official answer to Senate estimates, Johnson “does not have a
formal performance agreement” in place.
Besides,
he said, the cost overruns and ongoing delays performed better than a
home renovation job.
“I
think any fair and reasonable person would say this is quite an
amazing result,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but if you
want to get a tradie or a plumber or a chippie or a sparkie now,
compared with what you got in 2017, everything costs more.”
As
one employee noted, it was “bizarre logic”, not least because the
cost blowout would end up being much more than the claimed “10 per
cent”.
“I
don’t know a tradie charging billions of taxpayer dollars and only
delivering half of what they’re supposed to and charging more than
they’re supposed to,” they said.
“Honestly
everyone thought he was going to step down at this meeting and I
think a lot of people were bitterly disappointed that he didn’t.”
Then there is the matter of the Bureau's workplace relations which when made public further shattered confidence in this organisation.
In
2018 Jasmine Chambers took up the position of General
Manager, Global and National Science Relations at the Australian
Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), with a total remuneration package of
$218,700.00 per annum.
Reading
between the lines it appears Ms. Chambers offended the alpha male
sensibilities of one or more senior executives in an organisation
which still has a predominately male workforce.
What
followed looked suspiciously like a sustained effort to remove her
from employment with BOM and such employment ceased with effect on 21
December 2020.
The
Sydney Morning Herald,
5 September 2024:
The
Bureau of Meteorology has lost a bitterly fought unfair dismissal
case that dates back more than five years, while a raft of current
and former employees have come forward to describe the workplace
culture as “toxic” and “chaotic”.
The
Commonwealth agency dropped its appeal of an unfair dismissal
decision in favour of former employee Jasmine Chambers, who joined in
2019 as general manager of global and national science relationships.
The appeal case was settled out of court late last month, which means
the findings from the earlier judgment stand.
In
a scathing judgment in February, Judge Doug Humphreys, from the
Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, found the bureau had
breached the Fair Work Act in four ways when it drove Chambers out of
the organisation in 2020.
The
Chambers case concludes as five other current and former employees,
speaking on condition of anonymity, have shared claims with this
masthead of a “toxic” culture, “chaotic” decision-making, and
bullying.
All
five claim that part of the reason for low staff morale was an
institutional reluctance to deal with questions about climate change
and extreme weather at a time when the nation was dealing with
mounting climate disasters such as bushfires and floods. The BoM
denies these claims.....
The
court criticised several managers, particularly chief executive Dr
Andrew Johnson. The former Coalition government appointed Johnson in
2016 and renewed the position for another five years in 2021.
“The
court formed the view that Dr Johnson managed the bureau using a
close and detailed management style, in which his views were final
and not subject to any challenge,” the judgment says....
Read
the full article at:
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/bom-loses-illegal-sacking-case-as-staff-condemn-toxic-and-chaotic-culture-20240817-p5k35d.html
Extract
from Chambers
v Commonwealth of Australia ( Bureau of Meteorology ) (No 2) [2024]
FedCFamC2G 100 (9 February 2024). Last updated: 3 June
2024:
"83.The
Court accepts that the applicant has tried to recall her evidence as
best she can and overall, the Court finds her evidence is reliable
and credible.
84.
Dr Brunet joined the Bureau shortly before the applicant. He had
occupied senior positions within similar organisations in other
countries and had moved to Australia to take up the position he
occupied. While he agreed he approved the applicant’s overseas
travel plan in advance, including the PTO and annual leave, he
refused to accept any responsibility for the approval not complying
with usual requirements. The Court accepts the applicant’s recall
of a conversation in July 2019 where Dr Brunet said to the applicant
“Don’t show me the rules, - you need to learn. I do not have time
to read the documentation that I am approving. I have to trust my
people, you and others, that you will not do the wrong thing”. The
Court formed the view that Dr Brunet was not prepared to accept any
personal responsibility for any matters involving the applicant where
it may have negatively impacted upon his position within the Bureau.
It was clear that Dr Brunet would defer in his view on any matter to
that of Dr Johnson, even where he may have disagreed with that view.
His Affidavit evidence needs to be carefully scrutinised and compared
to the contemporary records before being relied upon....
89.
Dr Johnson gave both Affidavit and oral evidence and was cross
examined for some time. The Court formed a view that he had
significant reservations in relation to the applicant, in that she
did not come from the scientific background and that she took “strong
positions” whereas in his view, the applicant should have backed
off and listened. Dr Brunet described these actions as embarrassing
to Dr Johnson (Court Book 175). The Court formed the view that Dr
Johnson managed the Bureau using a close and detailed management
style, in which his views were final, and not subject to any
challenge. The fact that the applicant pushed back, seeking examples
and justifications for positions, in the Court’s view, would have
been a matter that would have exacerbated Dr Johnson’s negative
views of the applicant....
91.
Dr [Peter] Stone’s evidence is dealt with further on in this judgment. The
Court found his evidence unsatisfactory and not credible or reliable.
He sought to explain away issues with his evidence. His explanations
were unconvincing. The lack of credibility of Dr Stone’s evidence
however not only impacts upon his evidence. It impacts on the entire
narrative being put forward by the Bureau. It invites negative
findings as to the whole of the narrative, despite the evidence of
other witnesses."
