A pivotal year for digital transformation at the BFI

So before we do that, allow me to set the scene.  

Hello, I’m Neil Williams, the BFI’s Executive Director for all things digital and tech. I’ve been here since 2022, just over 3 years now.  

My directorate looks after the technology all BFI staff use internally, and most of the BFI’s public-facing digital services.  

Those include BFI Player; digital and analogue film projection in our cinemas; our main website (the entry point to all BFI services); and various online products for accessing our cultural programme, funding schemes and collections.

We do this working closely with teams across the organisation, of course. Digital is just one part of how their services get delivered – but it’s an important one, with a big impact on the way people find and experience the BFI.

While keeping all that existing stuff ticking over is our day-to-day, it isn’t our main purpose.  

We’re mostly here to help the BFI transform.  

The BFI will be 100 years old in 2033.  

We’re 2 years into delivering a 10-year strategy which defined the big changes we aim to make by that centenary.

Those include bold ambitions for growing the reach and impact of our digital platforms and changing how our whole organisation works to become digital-first by the time we slice into our big birthday cake.

That’s a tall order for a 92-year-old institution that predates the internet by half a century, and one that’s fiercely committed (my teams included) to championing in-person experiences and the joy of physical formats.  

But change we must. Technology shifts of the last 30 years have so radically altered everyone’s lives that all organisations must adapt to meet ever-rising expectations. It’s vital we catch up and keep up, and there’s a vast amount to do.  

We know that your experiences with some of our most-used digital services can be frustrating and have fallen behind the times. There’s huge untapped potential we can exploit to share the BFI’s incredible cultural programme, industry support, knowledge and collections with a great many more people online. Systems powering most of our services haven’t changed in a decade or more. We can and must become more efficient internally, enabled by technology, to serve you better. And we must stay relevant, adapting faster to keep up with all this accelerating change.

And so, my directorate’s primary purpose is to be agents for that change – ensuring the BFI catches up to your expectations of us, then keeps moving with the times.

Broadly speaking, we’re driving two big goals across the organisation: transforming our services, and transforming ourselves. They’re mutually dependent – you can’t do either of these things well without doing the other.

To do both, we’re introducing ways of working and thinking that have matured in the private sector and civil service in recent decades. And we’re uniting the organisation behind a vision for a more cohesive suite of products and services, powered by a more connected set of systems, platforms and data.  

And, using those principles and methods, and having invested (to the extent we can) in our capability, we’ve begun to take big strides forwards in transforming our flagship services.

Some of the fruits of all this labour are already visible. You may have spotted new BFI Player apps for TVs and mobiles, or felt that the experience of booking tickets for our cinemas and festivals has gone a little more smoothly, for example.

Other stuff has been bubbling away behind the scenes and been tested with research participants – and will soon be ready to share in public.  

I can’t wait for you to see the work teams here have been doing to build a brand-new service for seeing what’s on at our cinemas, which is properly game changing, both for the quality of your experience and how we operate internally.

I can’t wait for you to see the work we’re doing to bring together services for exploring digitised video from the BFI National Archive in new, more open ways.  

I’m excited for colleagues to also tell you about how we’re improving cyber security, automating manual work, improving our intranet and other internal changes – sharing learnings from these less visible areas to let you look behind the scenes, benefit others in our sector, and get feedback on our approach.  

But what I’m proudest of is the user-centred and iterative way we’re doing this work, and the talent and creativity of my colleagues, whose voices I am excited for you to hear through this blog.

We’re a small team, relative to all this ambition. The BFI is a charity and government body, with all the budget challenges that entails. At the same time its remit is broad, so we end up spreading our digital and technology resource thinly across it all. Progress isn’t always as fast as we’d like.  

But we’re a mighty, talented bunch doing stellar work around our exceptionally busy day-to-day operation. (I would say that, of course, but it’s true!)

Coming back to the title of this post, in April we entered year 3 of delivering Screen Culture 2033, which will be a pivotal year for the BFI’s digital transformation.  

It’s pivotal because we expect to deliver most of what we said we’d do in the first 3 years, while also taking everything we’ve learned along the way to set ourselves up well for the next phase – en route to those 100th birthday goals.

Finally, part of the digital culture we’re seeking to create here is to be more open in how the BFI talks about its work and learning in public. So, in the spirit of demonstrating by doing and creating precedent, you will hear more about our digital work in subsequent posts through this year.

Neil Williams is Executive Director of Technology and Digital Transformation. You can follow him on Bluesky, LinkedIn, and his personal blog where he posts regular insights.

If you’re interested in supporting the BFI’s digital work as a sponsor or donor, please get in touch with us at philanthropy@bfi.org.uk  

The BFI would like to thank the BFI Trust, The Uggla Family Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropy for supporting elements of our digital transformation.