Conclusion 25

The BBC did not put in place effective monitoring of its BBC World Service savings programmes. The BBC set clear financial targets for its savings programmes, however, the complexity of its finance systems meant that it could not track savings on a granular level and had to rely on estimates. In addition, the BBC focused on financial metrics without setting out clearly what success would look like for its non-financial objectives or how this would be measured.49 For example, the BBC did not track the impact of its savings programmes on key measures such as the amount of new content it produces or analyse how the changes it made during its savings programmes impacted its outputs at an overall or language-service level. Without effective monitoring, senior leaders were unable to effectively understand if the World Service savings programme were progressing in line with expectations, identify where progress is off-track or learn lessons which support better informed future decision making.50 45 Q 10 46 Q 15 47 Q 26 48 Q 5 49 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.13, 2.18 50 C&AG’s Report, paras 17, 2.18, 3.3 15