Former BBC chief Mark Thompson: I'm sorry for spending £100m on failed digital plan

Mark Thompson: apologised for the BBC's failed £100m scheme

3 February 2014

Ex-BBC chief Mark Thompson today apologised for failings in a digital project which led to almost £100 million of licence fee-payers' money being wasted.

Mr Thompson was hauled in front of the Public Affairs Committee with a handful of other current and former BBC employees to explain the corporation's doomed Digital Media Initiative.

Former chief technology officer John Linwood also gave evidence about the scheme, which was aimed at creating an integrated digital production and archiving system but was scrapped by Tony Hall when he took over as director-general.

Asked about previous evidence, where he said DMI was working well, Mr Thompson told the committee: "I don't believe I have misled you on any other matter and I don't believe I misled you knowingly on this one."

He said it "failed as a project" and added that he "wanted to say sorry" for the waste of public money.

But he told the committee his previous evidence was "a faithful and accurate account of my understanding of the project at that point".

A report by the National Audit Office (NAO), published last week, was critical of the scheme and said the BBC Executive "did not have sufficient grip" on the IT project and did not properly assess the system to see whether it was "technically sound".

DMI was meant to allow staff to handle all aspects of video and audio content from their desks, but after years of difficulties - during which £125.9 million was ploughed into it - the plug was pulled last year, leaving a net cost of £98.4 million.

It emerged last week that Mr Linwood, who was paid a salary of £280,000, was sacked weeks after being suspended over the multimillion-pound failure last May.

Mr Linwood said Mr Hall had been too hasty in writing off "tens of millions" of pounds of investment in IT.

He told the committee: "They wrote off software that was working and they wrote off infrastructure that was working. They were written off because the business decided not to use them."

MPs also asked Caroline Thomson, the BBC's former chief operating officer, about her pay-off, which saw her leave the corporation with around £700,000 and a £2 million pension pot.

Asked if she would return some of that money, she said: "No."

She told the committee: "I was made redundant, I was made redundant, I didn't want to be made redundant. I wanted to stay and work.

"I was paid a lot of money, I completely accept that, but it was my contractual entitlement and no more."

Asked to justify her pay, Ms Thomson said: "I did a very big responsible job, I could have earned a lot more if I was working for ITV."

Defending what he said about DMI in February 2011, Mr Thompson said: "I'm absolutely clear that at the time that was what I knew about the project."

Mr Thompson said he believed that "overall a lot of work and effort went in to get it to work on the business side".

However, he said that the "language which the team were using" combined with reports the technology was being used on shows such as The One Show, led him to believe DMI was "being more extensively used" than it was.

Former BBC Trustee Anthony Fry said a decision to scrap a planned internal audit of DMI was "probably the wrong decision".

He also said the Trust "did not have a sufficient knowledge around technology" to measure its progress, but said changing the BBC's governance system or bringing in the communications watchdog, Ofcom, would not have changed the outcome.

A BBC spokesman said: “BBC Director of Operations Dominic Coles said in his evidence to the committee that after an extensive review, we didn’t find anything that had enduring value and we decided from a prudent accounting perspective to write everything down to zero.”

Former BBC chief Mark Thompson: I'm sorry for spending £100m on failed digital plan

Read More