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IT BBC

BBC outsources tech contracts as it looks to slash millions on IT bills

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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

September 13, 2015 | 3 min read

The BBC will have to slash millions of pounds from its disastrous IT bill following a new funding settlement with the government that will see tech giants lining up bids for outsourced contracts.

After years of failures under its current £2bn IT supply agreement which it originally signed with Siemens in 2004, the BBC will now split up IT contracts.

The move is part of a major overhaul known as Project Aurora which is intended to provide more value to licence fee payers and better flexibility amid a rapidly evolving technology landscape.

The first of the big contracts, worth up to £230m of licence fee payers’ money over seven years, is expected to be awarded soon. It will connect various broadcasting and production facilities; something which the broadcaster has struggled to do in its Siemens partnership.

Discussing Project Aurora the BBC’s chief technology officer, Matthew Postgate, said that and long-term technology contracts were commonplace when it signed the Siemens deal 10 years ago however , the pace of change means this is isn’t an appropriate model for the BBC today".

He added that the publicly funded broadcaster is "moving away from one monolithic, long-term contract with a single supplier, to multiple shorter-term contracts with a number of specialist companies". The BBC says that this will save £90m over the next two years.

BBC broadcasts have experienced some embarrassing failures as a result of IT problems including critical systems such as newsroom landlines and computers repeatedly cutting off. This has led to incidents such as a newsreader being forced to read headlines from the BBC website from her iPhone.

Several major IT suppliers are in the frame for contracts, including Atos, which runs the current contract after buying the division of Siemens five years ago. Other contenders include HP, Ericsson, Fujitsu, BT, HCL, Capita, Serco and IBM.

Director-general Lord Hall said last week that the BBC must make savings of 20pc over the next five years as part of the recent funding agreement with the new Conservative administration.

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