TechnologyBBC committee rejects DMI plan

4th March 2010

The team drafted in to turn around the BBC’s DMI (Digital Media Initiative) has had its latest business plan rejected.

BBC FM&T chief technical architect Dirk-Willem van Gulik and former LazyTown executive producer Raymond Le Gué have been put in charge of DMI, but their new proposal was sent back by the BBC Finance Committee on Friday (26 February).

The committee asked for “further details on how DMI will be implemented into the business”.

One BBC insider said that questions were also raised about the initiative’s finances and benefits, a suggestion strongly refuted by a BBC spokeswoman.

“It’s just a case of finessing the plan,” the spokeswoman said. “It’s tweaks rather than major revisions.”

This work will now take ‘a few weeks’ and a revised presentation will be brought before the same committee. It is not clear whether this process will delay the rollout of the corporation-wide digital production environment, which
will take in various BBC production divisions and MediaCityUK.

The DMI was launched to enable the BBC to make better use of the assets it creates.

A virtual online archive has been confirmed as a key part of the project, along with an overhaul of desktop production.

It was brought in-house last year after Siemens was dropped from the project.

Pic - Fawlty Towers: DMI will help the BBC make better use of archive material