By Tony Collins
The Register reported yesterday that hundreds of IT roles at the BBC will be offshored to cheaper wage locations under a £560m contract renewal with its incumbent outsourcing supplier Atos.
Atos executives said in a conference call heard by The Register that a new “Aurora” IT contract model will involve a significant amount of offshoring and new tooling. The new contract is due to start in October.
Employees may go into an “availability pool” and some may be redeployed within Atos.
Only a few are expected to stay on the BBC account. Most of the roles may be exported to Atos centres in Poland and India. About 400 Atos staff are affected.
Last week James Purnell, BBC director of Radio and Education, told Newsnight that the £75m expected to be saved from the IT programme with Atos could help address the gender pay gap.
Thank you to David Orr for alerting me to The Register’s article.
Campaign4Change 
I associate Atos with the disgraceful and incompetent ‘fit-for-work-tests.’ The only thing worse than Atos was the government that commissioned them.
Very sorry for the BBC IT staff who probably do know what they are doing and who are being culled so that their salaries can be passed to those who probably don’t.
Hope the IT staff can rebrand themselves ‘consultants’ and charge handsomely when they are called in to repair the likely damages.
If the BBC continues its decline, I personally will spend more time online watching cat and dog videos.
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Thank you for the comment Zara
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