The BBC has doubled its data staff from 139 to 277 over the past three years, significantly ramping up its investment in data, according to official figures.
In total, the BBC splashed over £34m during the period, with a steady increase in investment year on year.
The data was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), and analysed by the Parliament Street Think Tack.
Over the past year, spending reached £16m on 277 staff members, the highest amount during the three years in both spending and number of employees.
The size of the data team doubled compared to 2022, during which the BBC spent just £6m.
“The BBC is consumed by a huge audience across the UK and the world,” said Stuart Harvey, CEO of Datactics.
“Data is critical to the organisation, particularly enabling programmers and schedulers to better understand viewer or listener behaviour, as millions consume the corporation’s content on multiple devices and channels.
“It is excellent to see that the BBC is investing in data staff. It is important that the staff are equipped with the data skills and tools to maximise the information that they are handling.
“When working with data staff and providing training, it’s important that organisations prioritise providing all staff with a base level of data skills, creating a self-service data culture where everyone can access, manipulate and utilise data to drive efficiency.”
Over the three years, the BBC also expanded the number of data roles it employed, going from 24 different data job titles to 27.
Rich Bovey, chief for data for and digital, said: “Without a doubt, organisations continue to invest more in their data teams, but the trend is for targeted spend to achieve specific outcomes.
“It’s hugely positive to see the BBC’s investment in people and innovation, bringing in experts in key areas such as data science and data analysis.
“Enabling and empowering other employees, promoting data literacy and equipping people with the tools and resources make a huge, measurable difference.”
The investment of the BBC follows wider themes of public sector data investment with the departments of the UK government, such as HMRC recently investing £133m into data science.