BBC suspends technology boss over 'wasted' £100m In response the BBC Trust gave it the green light to continue, however, and BBC management claimed the Digital Media Initiative was "now well underway," "despite the initial difficulties." In a letter to the Public Accounts Committee, BBC trustee Anthony Fry today said the project had created "little or no assets," "It is of utmost concern to us that a project which had already failed to deliver value for money in its early stages has now spent so much more of licence fee payers' money," he said, inviting MPs to hold a hearing on the failure. The trust is extremely concerned by the way the project has been managed and reported to us and we intend to act quickly ensure that there can be no repeat of a failure on this scale. The project was originally approved in 2008 supposed to be completed in 2017 at a total cost of £133.6m on the most recent forecast. Some £98.4m has already been spent. "Ambitious technology projects like this always carry a risk of failure," Lord Hall said. It does not mean we should not attempt them but we have a responsibility to keep them under much greater control than we did here. Mr Linwood, who grew up in Zimbabwe, joined the BBC in 2009 from Yahoo! and had previously worked for more than a decade at Microsoft. In 2011 the BBC paid him a £70,000 bonus, taking his total package for the year to £358,000. On his personal website Mr Linwood described himself as "a global technology leader with an unparalleled track record for successfully delivering global scale technology and services for the biggest names in the world." "A founder of three successful startups and having been a key and valued senior leader in three of the world's largest players in the technology space (Microsoft, Yahoo and BBC), John has a high degree of technology, commercial and leadership ability on a global scale that has proven itself repeatedly throughout his impressive and distinguished career," the website said. The website has been deleted but copies are stored on the Wayback Machine archive. His annual budget of more than half a billion pounds and staff of 1,200 will be taken over by Peter Coles, the BBC's technology controller.