The Hidden Cost of Duplicate Images: What the Numbers Reveal About Canberra's Digital Storage Crisis

Canberra's public sector has a clutter problem measured in terabytes. Across ACT government departments, federal agencies headquartered in Barton and Parkes, and research institutions including the Australian National University, duplicate image files now account for a substantial and largely unaudited slice of digital storage costs — a problem that IT asset management specialists say has grown sharply since the shift to hybrid working arrangements after 2020.

The issue crystallised this year when the ACT Digital Strategy, managed through the ACT Government's Digital, Data and Technology Solutions (DDTS) unit, began a formal audit of shared drive usage across directorates. Storage consumption across whole-of-government systems had grown by a measurable margin in the two years to June 2026, with image files — scanned documents, photographs, design assets and web graphics — forming a disproportionate share of that growth.

What the Numbers Actually Show

Industry benchmarks from enterprise storage analysts suggest that between 20 and 30 percent of files held on typical government shared drives are exact or near-exact duplicates. For an organisation running even 500 terabytes of active storage — a modest footprint for a mid-sized federal department — that translates to roughly 100 to 150 terabytes of redundant data. At current cloud storage contract rates negotiated through the Digital Transformation Agency's whole-of-government panels, storage costs can run to several thousand dollars per terabyte annually once backup, redundancy and licensing are factored in.

The University of Canberra's Centre for Intelligent Systems Research has explored related questions around data deduplication in research computing environments. ANU's research computing infrastructure, based at the Acton campus, similarly grapples with image dataset redundancy — particularly in disciplines like medical imaging, remote sensing and earth observation, where raw datasets are routinely copied between project folders without formal version control.

For local businesses, the picture is more fragmented. Civic-based design studios and digital marketing firms working with ACT government clients routinely manage image libraries running to tens of thousands of files. Without systematic deduplication tools applied at the point of ingest, the same product photograph or campaign graphic can exist in four or five locations across a single project folder structure within weeks of a project starting.

Why Duplicate Images Are Harder to Catch Than Other File Types

Text documents are relatively straightforward to deduplicate — file hashes catch identical copies quickly. Images are more complicated. A JPEG exported at 85 percent quality and the same image exported at 90 percent quality will have different file hashes despite being visually indistinguishable. Perceptual hashing tools, which compare the visual content of images rather than their binary fingerprint, are now widely available but have not been standardised across ACT or federal government procurement frameworks.

The DDTS audit, which is understood to be ongoing as of July 2026, is examining whether existing whole-of-government software licences — including Microsoft 365 tenancies used across ACT directorates from the Canberra Civic Centre on London Circuit to offices in Tuggeranong — include sufficient tooling for automated duplicate detection, or whether separate procurement would be required.

For Gungahlin and Belconnen-based community organisations receiving ACT government grants, the practical stakes are lower but still real. A community centre managing grant acquittal photographs, event images and promotional materials across a shared Google Drive or similar platform can easily accumulate hundreds of redundant files within a single financial year, complicating records management obligations under the Territory Records Act 2002.

The most immediate practical step available to ACT public servants and local organisations is a manual folder audit combined with free or low-cost deduplication utilities — several of which operate effectively on Windows and macOS without enterprise licensing. For agencies under the DDTS framework, the relevant contact point is the ICT service desk rather than individual directorates. For ANU and UC staff, both institutions maintain research data management advisory services that can guide teams through image library hygiene before storage audits hit at the end of the calendar year. The longer this is left, the more expensive the eventual fix.