ACT Government's Duplicate Image Replacement Program: What Happens Next and the Key Decisions Ahead

The ACT Government is at a decision point. A territory-wide review of duplicate digital imagery held across public sector agencies — covering everything from planning records and infrastructure photography to communications libraries — has wrapped up its assessment phase, and the findings are now sitting with the Digital, Data and Technology Solutions directorate in Civic. What comes next will shape how dozens of agencies manage their visual records for the rest of the decade.

The timing matters. The ACT Public Service is under sustained pressure to cut overhead costs after years of post-pandemic budget repair, and the 2025–26 ACT Budget flagged digital consolidation as one mechanism for achieving savings across shared services. Duplicate storage is not a trivial expense: in enterprise environments, redundant image libraries inflate both licensing costs for asset management platforms and the ongoing labour required to tag, audit and retrieve files.

What the Review Found — and Which Agencies Are in the Frame

The audit covered more than a dozen directorates, with Transport Canberra and City Services, the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate, and Canberra Health Services identified as holding the largest volumes of duplicated photographic and graphic assets. According to territory procurement records, ACT agencies collectively operate under several separate digital asset management contracts, some of which overlap in scope and were procured independently rather than through a whole-of-government arrangement.

The duplication problem is partly structural. When the Capital Metro Agency drove the original light rail construction through Gungahlin and Flemington Road, it generated a large photographic archive managed outside the standard Transport Canberra system. Some of that material was later ingested into the main directorate library without deduplication, creating redundant copies across at least two platforms. A similar pattern occurred during the redevelopment of the Woden Town Centre precinct, where planning imagery from multiple consultants ended up across both the EPSDD records management system and a separate SharePoint environment used by the City Renewal Authority.

The ACT Government's shared services model, administered through Shared Services under the Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate, is the most likely vehicle for any centralised replacement. Shared Services already manages payroll, finance systems and some ICT infrastructure for ACT agencies from its operations at 220 Northbourne Avenue. Bringing digital asset management under the same umbrella would be consistent with the direction set out in the ACT Digital Strategy 2025–2030, which named consolidation of duplicated platforms as a priority action.

The Key Decisions Still Unresolved

Three questions remain open heading into the second half of 2026. First, which platform wins. The two main contenders under evaluation are a centralised government-hosted solution and a Software-as-a-Service arrangement with a commercial vendor — a choice that carries meaningfully different cost profiles over a five-year contract horizon. Industry benchmarks for government-scale digital asset management platforms typically range from $300,000 to over $1 million annually depending on storage volume and user count, though the ACT Government has not published a figure specific to this procurement.

Second, data sovereignty. Some imagery held by Canberra Health Services and the Education Directorate includes identifiable content from public facilities — school grounds, hospital precincts — and legal advice is being sought on whether consolidating that material onto a commercial cloud platform triggers obligations under the ACT's Health Records (Privacy and Access) Act 1997 or the Information Privacy Act 2014.

Third, the question of who absorbs transition costs. If agencies are required to migrate existing libraries to a new central system, the resourcing burden falls on directorates that are already managing tight staffing budgets. The Australian Public Service Commission's most recent State of the Service data noted that ICT project backlogs remain a persistent drag on digital transformation across both federal and territory governments.

A decision on platform selection is expected before the end of the September quarter, with any new contracts likely to require ACT Legislative Assembly scrutiny given the probable expenditure threshold. For public servants working out of offices in Barton, Phillip and Belconnen, the practical upshot is simpler: fewer login credentials, one search interface, and — if the transition goes to plan — no more finding five versions of the same photograph in three different folders.