Guardian: BBC axes £98m technology project to avoid 'throwin

[silentfilm]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/ma ... initiative


BBC axes £98m technology project to avoid 'throwing good money after bad'

Independent investigation launched after Digital Media Initiative, which aimed to digitise archive, results in catalogue of errors

Tara Conlan
guardian.co.uk, Friday 24 May 2013 06.18 EDT

The BBC has admitted that it has wasted almost £100m on a technology project that was designed to make the corporation "tapeless", and has closed it to stop it "throwing good money after bad".

The BBC has spent £98.4m on the controversial Digital Media Initiative – which was designed to do away with video tapes and create a kind of internal YouTube of BBC archive content that staff can access, upload, edit and then air from their computers – the equivalent of almost 660,000 licence fees.

BBC trustee Anthony Fry has written to the Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, and to the National Audit Office explaining that the BBC's chief technology officer, John Linwood, has been suspended from his £287,000-a-year job.

Fry has also invited the PAC to hold a hearing on the issue.

He said in his letter to Hodge, which has been seen by the Guardian, that to spend any more money on DMI would "be, I fear, equivalent to throwing good money after bad."

"DMI will have cost the BBC £98.4m, having generated little or no assets," he said. "It is of utmost concern to us that a project which had already failed to deliver value for money in its early stages has now spent so much more of licence fee payers' money.

"The trust is extremely concerned by the way the project has been managed and reported to us and we intend to act quickly ensure that there can be no repeat of a failure on this scale."

The BBC Trust has appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers to conduct an investigation to establish what went wrong in terms of project management, control and governance.

BBC director general Tony Hall has taken the decision to close DMI.

"The DMI project has wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers' money and I saw no reason to allow that to continue which is why I have closed it," he said. "I have serious concerns about how we managed this project and the review that has been set up is designed to find out what went wrong and what lessons can be learned. Ambitious technology projects like this always carry a risk of failure, it does not mean we should not attempt them but we have a responsibility to keep them under much greater control than we did here."

DMI has had a chequered history. After it was approved by the BBC Trust in 2008, technology supplier Siemens was given a £79m contract without open competition.

But Siemens failed to deliver and the contract was terminated in 2009 by mutual agreement.

DMI was then taken in-house but the BBC had incurred a two-year delay and lost £26m in projected cost-saving benefits as a result.

Problems with the system were first exposed during the coverage of the death of Baroness Thatcher earlier this year – when BBC News staff were unable to access archive footage of the late prime minister via computers in New Broadcasting House in central London were forced to ferry tapes from the corporation's archive storage facility in Perivale, north-west London, in taxis or on the tube.

DMI was supposed to deliver £95.4m of savings to the corporation due to the efficiency of the new technology and the fact it was supposed to make using archive material for programmes quicker and cheaper.

After the issue was raised by the Guardian, Rob Wilson, MP for Reading East, wrote to Hall on 2 May, "serious concerns over the project's effectiveness".

Wilson asked "how much in total the BBC has spent on the Digital Media Initiative" and "how much of the benefits the project was supposed to deliver (estimated at £95.4m) have so far been delivered?"

Having not received a response, he wrote again earlier this week.

Meanwhile, BBC News head of technology Peter Coles is standing in while Linwood is suspended, pending the outcome of the BBC's investigation into DMI.

Questions are likely to be asked in the BBC's review about Linwood, who was one of four top BBC managers who were given a bonus, despite the corporation banning such payouts.

Linwood received a bonus of £70,000, taking his total pay to almost £358,000.

One insider described the DMI project as "the axis of awful", while another source said: "The scale of the project was too big and it got out of hand."

Rob Wilson MP said DMI had been a "disaster" for the BBC.

"The NAO concluded that the BBC's digital media initiative was not good value for money from its early stages. It also criticised the BBC's handling of the project, yet the corporation ploughed on regardless. The BBC spent well over £100m experimenting with a system that it appears was highly unlikely to work. It is a disaster for the BBC but a bigger disaster for the licence fee payer."

[pookybear]

I do wonder, with how much money that was wasted on this internal "Youtube" like program, what films could
have been saved with good old fashioned methods. £98m is alot of money just to threw out the window.
And with the fact that the BBC does not have the best record in preservation maybe some these monies should
be spent there instead some magical wireless pipe dream.

Let alone with people working there like Linwood getting a bonus of £70K. Not bad for someone who is already
laying back some £287K year. Nice to see once again in the world that incompetence is rewarded with fat
layout of bonuses. I can only hope that the impending investigation leads to his guy getting his golden parachute
cut off his back.

Pookybear

[silentfilm]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ds-newsxml

£100m debacle at BBC: After years of waste and chaos, failing IT scheme is finally axed by humiliated corporation

DG Tony Hall has 'serious concerns' about the project's management
BBC's Chief Technology Officer suspended pending investigation
Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was supposed to give staff archive access

By Alasdair Glennie

PUBLISHED: 08:32 EST, 24 May 2013 | UPDATED: 07:11 EST, 25 May 2013

The BBC has admitted it wasted almost £100million of licence fee payers’ money on a failed IT project.

MPs branded the debacle an ‘outrage’ as the corporation suspended its chief technology officer and threatened disciplinary action to those responsible.

BBC director general Tony Hall has now axed the Digital Media Initiative (DMI). The corporation’s governing body admitted it would be ‘throwing good money after bad’ to finish the project, which began five years ago.

'Waste of money': BBC director general Tony Hall said there was no point continuing the DMI project

Executives will be forced to explain the humiliating failure before the influential Public Accounts Committee of MPs next month, and the National Audit Office is expected to launch a further probe later this year.

The embarrassing news comes barely a week after the BBC was condemned for giving 894 staff an average of £23,000 each to move to its new headquarters in Salford.

The DMI was supposed to allow BBC staff to access the entire archive from their computers, doing away with the need for audio and video tapes.

It was expected to save the corporation £18million in production costs because staff could share and download material remotely instead of transporting tapes between headquarters.

First the original contractor, Siemens, was dropped in 2009 after months of costly delays.
Control of the project was handed to John Linwood, hired as the BBC’s chief technology officer from Yahoo! on a salary of £280,000 per year.

The don't mention it project.

But alarm bells continued to ring over the way the DMI was being handled, and it was the subject of a damning National Audit Office report in 2011.

Astonishingly, Mr Linwood was awarded a £70,000 bonus just months after the report was published.

Earlier this week he was suspended by Mr Hall while the BBC conducts an investigation into the debacle.

Mr Linwood has been temporarily replaced by the BBC’s technology controller Peter Coles.
Anthony Fry, chairman of the BBC Trust’s finance committee, revealed yesterday that a total of £98.4million has been spent developing the technology with no return.

He said it had ‘generated little or no assets’. In a letter to Margaret Hodge, the MP who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, he said: ‘Much of the software and hardware which has been developed could only be used by the BBC if the project were completed, a course of action which, due to technological difficulties and changes to business needs, would be, I fear, equivalent to throwing good money after bad.’
Shut down: The DMI project was supposed to give production staff easier access to the BBC's vast archives

Shut down: The DMI project was supposed to give production staff easier access to the BBC's vast archives

He added: ‘It is of utmost concern to us that a project which had already failed to deliver value for money in its early stages has now spent so much more of licence fee payers’ money.’

In the wake of the National Audit Office report in 2011, Eric Huggers, the BBC’s director of future, media and technology, was called before the Public Accounts Committee to explain why the DMI would no longer deliver the expected savings.

Mr Huggers, who earned £330,000 a year, insisted the project would eventually be completed but left the corporation weeks later and took a job at Intel.

As Mr Linwood’s direct boss, he had overall responsibility for the project at the time but can no longer be called to explain its failure.

Yesterday, Mrs Hodge said she was ‘shocked’ by the waste of money.

She said: ‘This is an outrage. It is altogether depressing to see yet another failed public sector IT project.

‘This has come at an enormous cost to the licence fee payer. It is particularly depressing because the BBC came before the Public Accounts Committee in 2011 to defend this project.

‘It was originally meant to save them £18million. Then they told us it had overrun and was going to cost [lose] £38million, but they insisted it was still worthwhile. They said “It’s all under control, we know what we’re doing”. Now they’re telling us they have spent £100million with absolutely no benefit at all. It is thoroughly, thoroughly shocking.’

Mrs Hodge said the BBC would be quizzed on the debacle at a special meeting of her select committee in Salford next month.

She said the National Audit Office would launch its own inquiry after an external review commissioned by the BBC Trust was complete. Mr Hall, who took over as director general in April, said: ‘The DMI project has wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers’ money and I saw no reason to allow that to continue which is why I have closed it.

‘I have serious concerns about how we managed this project and the review that has been set up is designed to find out what went wrong and what lessons have been learned. Ambitious technology projects like this always carry a risk of failure.

‘It does not mean we should not attempt them but we have a responsibility to keep them under much greater control than we did here.’

Director of Operations Dominic Coles added: ‘We will be taking disciplinary action where appropriate.’