BBC Paid Accenture £150,000 For DMI Review

The BBC is estimated to have paid business services firm Accenture around £150,000 for a review of its failed Digital Media Initiative (DMI).

A freedom of information (FOI) request, filed by a UK IT publication, revealed that the Broadcaster paid the firm over a five-week period in January and February 2013 for a “review.”

The review was to be preceded by a “mobilisation” phase lasting two to three weeks and eight consultants worked on the project, although not all were full time.

The BBC declined to reveal the exact figure Accenture was paid, claiming that the public interesting in maintaining the exemption outweighs the benefits of disclosing the information.

Therefore, the estimate of £150,000 was drawn by analysing information on salary monitoring website Payscale – the salaries of the firm’s top consultants was added to the predicted overhead.

What the findings of the review were remains unclear as there are only conflicting sources of information available.

Review Couldn’t Save Failed Project

The DMI project faced a number of issues before it was finally scrapped last year, including a Public Accounts Committee report that branded it a “complete failure.”

Ex-BBC CTO John Linwood was sacked over the affair, although he has since spoken out and claimed that he was used as the “fall guy” for the project.

The aim of DMI was to digitise the Broadcaster’s entire archives with the intention of modernising the organisation.

However, in the end, only a very small percentage of the BBC ended up using the supposedly essential system and poor project management meant it never reached its full potential.

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