BBC puts software licensing in the spotlight

The BBC has pledged it will continue reviewing all of its software licensing after removing licences for its electronic purchasing system from hundreds of staff that were not regularly using them.

The Beeb has said it has removed 780 licences, costing £150 each, from staff using its SAP electronic purchasing system, after it faced criticism from the National Audit Office for spending money on unused licences.

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The report last December said there were 2,126 staff members with licences to use the system who had not logged in from April to June 2007.

It recommended cutting the number of licences by 2,000, saving the licence fee payer £300,000 per year.

The BBC Trust's response on the issue to parliamentary spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee, has just been published.

In it the BBC explains why it had only cut the number of licences on the purchasing system by less than half of the number recommended by the NAO, saying it has its own internal review procedure.

The BBC said: "The SAP purchasing system is owned and reviewed by BBC Finance on a quarterly basis, when users are removed from the system after an extended period of non-use."

It added: "Within the Future Media and Technology division, for major licensing agreements with flexible maintenance arrangements - such as those with Microsoft - the BBC annually reviews the licence usage and increases or decreases its licence volume according to the terms of the vendor's End User Licensing Agreement.

"Where flexible maintenance arrangements are not available, such as with Oracle, the BBC maintains a central list of licence allocations in order to manage the redeployment of licences where possible."

It added that all commercial off-the-shelf applications installed on the BBC standard desktop are monitored regularly, and any applications installed that show as not being used for six months or more are removed and made available to other business areas of the BBC.

The BBC also pledged to try and carry out e-auctions wherever possible but said there were limited opportunities to run e-auctions each year.

This followed PAC criticism of the BBC for only holding five e-auctions in 2007/08, after it managed to save £3m per year by holding 19 in the previous two years.

The corporation said it had now carried out 25 e-auctions, six of which took place in 2007/08.