Building public value

At the end of June 2004 the BBC published a vision paper for our future, entitled Building public value.

This document laid out our aims for the next 10 years and beyond. It provided a starting point for our own detailed planning and fed into the thinking of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) which is running the review of our Charter and has written the Green Paper.

Central to our vision paper is the concept of ‘public value'.

What is 'public value'?

The BBC is owned by the British public. It was created to inform, educate and entertain its audiences: to improve life in the UK.

In other words, the BBC exists to create public value.

This is very different to the aim of commercial broadcasters, which exist to create monetary value for their owners or shareholders.

When we produce programmes and services we need to think of our audiences not only as consumers but as members of a wider society to which we must contribute.

Public value should be the goal for everything the BBC does.

Where did the idea of public value come from?

Public value isn't a new idea, it's always been at the heart of everything the BBC does (or should have been).

The change is that we've now set public value firmly at the front of our thinking, to help us focus on doing the right things in the right way. For example we aim to have a Public Value Test against which all our new services will be measured and the four internal reviews which are currently in progress all focus on how we can maximise public value.