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:
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."
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