Canberra's Duplicate Image Problem: What Happens Next and the Key Decisions Ahead

A quiet but consequential reckoning is underway across Canberra's public sector. Government agencies, universities, and municipal bodies are sitting on vast stores of duplicated digital imagery — scanned documents, photographs, mapping files, and archival records — that have accumulated across disconnected systems for more than a decade. The question now is not whether to fix it, but who pays, who decides, and what gets deleted.

The issue has come into sharper focus this year as the ACT Government's broader digital modernisation agenda, tied to its whole-of-government ICT strategy, pushes agencies to consolidate storage infrastructure by the end of the 2026–27 financial year. Duplicate image files are a significant driver of unnecessary storage costs and present real risks under the Territory Records Act 2002, which requires agencies to maintain accurate and accessible records — not redundant, conflicting copies.

Where the Problem Is Concentrated

The challenge is particularly acute at a handful of institutions. The Australian National University, which manages one of the largest research data repositories in the southern hemisphere from its Acton campus, has acknowledged internally that image deduplication is part of its ongoing infrastructure review. The ACT's own Access Canberra service centres — including the busy Dickson and Tuggeranong locations — process thousands of scanned identity and licensing documents each month, creating conditions where duplicates propagate across legacy case management platforms.

Transport Canberra and City Services, responsible for street and asset photography used in infrastructure planning across growth corridors like Gungahlin and Belconnen, also maintains image libraries spread across at least three separate content management systems, according to public procurement records. The consolidation of those systems is listed as a priority under the agency's digital asset management roadmap published in late 2025.

The National Archives of Australia, headquartered on Queen Victoria Terrace in Parkes, faces a related but distinct problem: historical digitisation programs run across different eras produced multiple scan versions of the same physical records, often at varying resolutions and under different file-naming conventions. Reconciling those duplicates while preserving the integrity of archival provenance is a technically demanding task that archivists describe as painstaking work.

The Decisions That Will Define the Outcome

Three choices will determine how this unfolds. First, agencies must decide whether to pursue automated deduplication tools or rely on manual review processes. Automated tools are faster and cheaper at scale — enterprise solutions from vendors active in the Australian public sector market typically carry licensing costs starting around $80,000 to $150,000 per annum for mid-sized deployments — but they carry risk. An algorithm that incorrectly flags a unique record as a duplicate and removes it could create irreversible gaps in a legal or administrative record set.

Second, there is the governance question. The ACT's Digital Strategy and Services directorate, based in Civic, would be the natural body to set whole-of-government deduplication standards, but its current mandate does not explicitly extend to directing line agencies on records management at that operational level. A formal policy instrument, or at minimum a binding guidance note issued under the Territory Records Act, would be needed to create consistent practice across the public service's roughly 30,000 employees.

Third, and most practically, agencies need to settle on retention rules before any deletion occurs. Under the ACT's General Disposal Authority for Administrative Records, certain categories of scanned images must be retained for defined minimum periods regardless of whether a duplicate exists elsewhere. Deleting the wrong version — even a genuine duplicate — without verifying which copy holds the authoritative metadata trail could expose an agency to a compliance finding from the Territory and Municipal Services directorate.

The coming six months are critical. Budget bids for the 2027–28 cycle will be compiled from September, meaning agencies that want dedicated deduplication funding need business cases ready by October at the latest. The University of Canberra's Bruce campus, which has run applied research into digital records management through its Faculty of Business, Government and Law, has the institutional expertise to assist with pilot assessments — but that kind of cross-sector collaboration requires someone to pick up the phone and initiate it. So far, publicly at least, no agency has announced it will.