Career
Educated at Elizabeth College, Guernsey, Highfield worked as first as a computer programmer before turning management consultant. He worked in the TMT sector for Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) for six years, working in post-apartheid South Africa. In 1994 he returned to the UK to become head of IT and New Media for NBC Europe. He then joined Flextech TV — a pay-TV channel provider — where he worked for five years as managing director of interactive services. While at Flextech he founded Flextech Interactive and invested in online ticketing agency WayAheadGroup and mapping company Multimap.
In October 2000 he joined the BBC as Director of New Media & Technology working for Greg Dyke who said in his autobiography Inside Story pp178-9 "Ashley is one of the most inventive people I know and our one-to-one monthly meetings were amongst the most creative and stimulating I had in my time as Director-General". Tellingly Dyke also noted "Ashley didn't have an easy task bringing all the BBC's online activity under one division, but he did it with great success". In 2005, under new Director Genera Mark Thompson, Highfield retained his place on the new slimmed down Executive Board and was given additional responsibility for Broadcast and Production technology across the BBC. In July 2006 the BBC reformed its structure, turning the New Media department into the 'Future Media & Technology' department (including BBC's Information & Archives business) with Ashley Highfield at its head. During his tenure, Highfield has overseen a massive growth in the BBC's online presence (from 3.5 million to 17 million users), interactive TV and mobile, as well as projects such as BBC Backstage and the BBC Creative Archive — although the latter has been in abeyance since September 2006 pending a public value test. Highfield has also overseen the development of the BBC iPlayer, which has been both praised and criticised (especially over its use of digital rights management). Whilst at the BBC, Highfield claimed £47,000 in expenses between 2004 and 2009, whilst on a salary of £466,000. This included a subscription to Sky and two iPods.
In November, 2007 he courted controversy within the Linux community by understating the GNU/Linux users to the BBC web site, the actual number being somewhere between 0.3% to 0.7%. He apologised for this in his blog.
Highfield is a Chartered Engineer.
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