The BBC is to abandon a £98m digital production system and suspend its chief technology officer (CTO), John Linwood, after the organisation's chief executive Tony Hall said it had "wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers' money".
Linwood, who is reported to earn about £287,000 a year before bonuses, spoke to Computing in February, explaining the BBC's role in helping Apple develop the iPhone and iPad, adding that the BBC's IT budget is continually increasing.
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"Technology is part of everything we do at the BBC, and it's one of the biggest levers for driving effectiveness, efficiency and improved quality. So we're spending more on technology now and we'll spend more next year," he said at the time.
The £98m digital production system was part of the Digital Media Initiative (DMI), which was launched in 2008 and aimed at changing the way staff developed, used and shared multimedia material, according to the BBC.
The project was put on hold temporarily last year, but was seen as integral to the BBC's move of resources to Salford in Greater Manchester.
"I have serious concerns about how we managed this project," said Lord Hall, director general of the BBC. "Ambitious technology projects like this always carry a risk of failure."
An independent review has been set up, added Hall, to investigate what went wrong and the lessons that can be learned. There had already been an internal review of the project in October 2012, after the BBC Trust had expressed serious concerns. A National Audit Office report in 2011 found that the initiative had proved a disappointment and was "not good value for money".
The BBC Trust's Anthony Fry revealed in a letter to the chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Margaret Hodge, that the project had produced "little or no assets".
"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," he said.
"We intend to act quickly to ensure that there can be no repeat of a failure on this scale," he added.
In April 2011, the PAC had criticised the scheme, which ended up costing an estimated £133.6m. It was meant to cost £81m, but deliver benefits of £99.6m by March 2015. However, milestones were never hit and the project has been delayed by two years.
Linwood's suspension suggests that he is being held accountable for the initiative, which the BBC believes was badly managed and did not keep up with the pace of change in technology.
The BBC's view contrasts with that of Linwood, who told Computing in February that the BBC was looking at ways to be "transformational with technology".
"I'm trying not to do straight like-for-like replacement when technology reaches its end of life, but investing in ways to do things differently. I want to reduce the overall technology capital base, so spending less money on just replacing kit, and more on making us more responsive, agile, flexible and mobile," he said.
