Jane Root was the BBC Two head who commissioned The Office after seeing the Seedy Boss tape. The tape was a 20-minute film made by Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais in June 1998, with Gervais playing an early version of David Brent.
Merchant produced the film as part of a BBC trainee-producer course. The character began as a comic “sleazy boss” impression Gervais had used while working at Xfm, and the short was filmed in a documentary style that became central to The Office.
Ash Atalla helped circulate the tape, and BBC comedy executive Jon Plowman was also important in developing the project. However, Root was the BBC Two controller who saw the potential in the demo and commissioned a pilot or series based on it. That distinction explains why the other names can appear in accounts of the show’s origins without being the canonical answer to this question.
The resulting series premiered on BBC Two in July 2001 and followed the employees of the fictional Slough paper company Wernham Hogg.