Written evidence from BBC Monitoring
INTRODUCTION
During a session on BBC World Service this month
the Committee asked for an update on BBC Monitoring. This note
aims to briefly recap on the last few years since the FAC last
reported on BBC Monitoring in its Annual Report on the FCO.
BBC Monitoring stands ready to provide more material
to the Committee on this or any other subject should it so wish.
Indeed, if the Committee would like to visit Caversham then you
are most cordially invited to do so.
BACKGROUND
The Committee is already aware from evidence
presented previously that in 2004, following a failure by the
then lead Stakeholder to agree the recommendations of an OGC led
review, and in the light of BBC Monitoring's then parlous financial
position, the Cabinet Office commissioned Sir Quentin Thomas to
conduct a root and branch review.
This review included all the then Stakeholders (BBC
World Service, MoD, the Cabinet Office and the FCO as the lead
Stakeholder), the three agencies, and HM Treasury. The review
reported in 2005 following that year's General Election.
The recommendations were accepted and the current
BBC Monitoring Stakeholder Regime came into existence in late
2005, enshrined in a Memorandum of Understanding agreed by all
the Stakeholders (which now included the three intelligence agencies
in addition to the previous Stakeholders, with the Cabinet Office
now taking the lead).
The key points of the new regime were an agreement
to Public Expenditure Survey (PES) transfer the previously disaggregated
departmental funding into a ring fenced fund administered by the
Cabinet Office, which in turn enabled an agreed common set of
requirements and priorities to be defined.
Such wide agreement was never possible under
the previous disaggregated funding regimes and was also deemed
by the many reviews of BBC Monitoring conducted between 1994-2003
to be impossible to achieve under hard charging models.
The outcome of the Quentin Thomas Review led
to the funding profile shown in row 1 of Table 1 below being agreed
by Stakeholders and HM Treasury.
Table 1
| | 2006-07
| 2007-08 | 2008-09
| 2009-10 | 2010-11
|
1 | Stakeholder funding agreed in 2005 £m
| 24.6 | 24.6 | 23.4
| 23.4 | 23.4 |
| 2 | Stakeholder funding agreed in CSR '07 £m
| 25.0 | 25.0 | 25.0
| | |
| 3 | Stakeholder funding received £m
| 24.6 | 24.6 | 24.6
| 25.0 | 24.8 |
| |
| | | |
|
Following a Cabinet Office bid on behalf of Stakeholders
as part of the CSR '07 process the funding profile should have
become that shown in row 2 above. That profile was not realised
and, as row 3 above shows, BBC Monitoring has been operating on
an effective "flat cash" funding profile since 2006.
This combined with financial problems associated with the
previous successive reviews has meant that it has had to achieve
an average of over 7% per annum efficiency savings since 2000-01.
This has come at a cost, most notably the loss of 25% of its UK
headcount in 2006-07—some 94 posts.
CURRENT POSITION
Despite the financial stringency demonstrated above BBC Monitoring
has used this period of stability to equip itself to meet the
evolving open source needs of its Stakeholders and US partner,
the Open Source Center.
Thus BBC Monitoring has invested in its international network
of bureaus, moving or opening six operations, including, in 2007,
in Tbilisi, ahead of the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict—our
coverage of which received much Stakeholder praise.
The main operations room at our Caversham HQ has been completely
rebuilt to allow staff to reap the benefits of more collaborative
working using modern digital technology. The strategy of investment
in staff and infrastructure will take a further significant step
next year when a new technology system to ingest, produce and
deliver digital multimedia content comes on stream.
This will allow BBC Monitoring to deliver a richer range
of products to our Stakeholders than ever before along with, crucially,
continuing the interchange of content with our US partner whose
own open source activities, in what is now a 67 year partnership
with BBC Monitoring, contributes a significant amount of unfunded
benefit to BBC Monitoring's UK Stakeholders.
Throughout the period BBC Monitoring has innovated new products
and services, for example covering the evolving uses of the Internet.
Such thematic services coupled with our unparalleled coverage
of countries like Iran, Afghanistan and Somalia have consistently
been praised by our Stakeholders and US partner alike, providing
often unique insight and context into issues impacting diplomats,
journalists, the military and agency staff.
FUTURE
In understanding that all of the UK public sector faces difficult
decisions, BBC Monitoring acknowledges that it is not immune.
But at a time of limited financial options, BBC Monitoring believes
it is even more important than hitherto to ensure that it can
be funded, operate and be governed in a stable manner, so allowing
it to maximise its efficiency and effectiveness for the benefit
of the UK Stakeholder community and its US partner.
This is even more crucial given the relatively small amount of
public funding that BBC Monitoring receives to deliver global
coverage spanning some 150 countries in 100 languages, something
that only be achieved by the bilateral burden sharing partnership
with the US Open Source Center.
BBC Monitoring has, until now, been able to use its hard
won period of stability, albeit with cash flat funding and 7%
per annum savings, to maintain its range of products and services,
achieve its highest ever scores for customer satisfaction and
invest for the future in both its UK and international operations
and its technological infrastructure.
22 November 2009
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