ACT Government's Digital Archive Project Tackles Duplicate Image Problem as Week's Audit Reveals Thousands of Redundant Files

Thousands of duplicate images clogging the ACT Government's shared digital infrastructure have been flagged for removal after an internal audit completed this week identified redundant files spread across at least a dozen agencies, with the bulk of the problem traced to the planning and transport directorates. The finding has accelerated a deduplication program that managers had been running at a low priority since February.

The timing matters. The ACT Government's whole-of-government cloud storage migration — moving legacy systems onto the Microsoft Azure platform under a contract signed in late 2025 — is scheduled to complete its first major phase by October 31. Carrying redundant image data into that new environment would inflate ongoing storage costs and, more critically, create version-control problems in systems that multiple directorates share. The duplicate files are not a trivial nuisance: they represent genuine administrative risk when staff pull the wrong version of a site photograph, planning map, or infrastructure record for a briefing or public document.

Where the Problem Sits

Most of the flagged duplicates are concentrated in two places. The first is the digital asset library maintained by Transport Canberra and City Services, which manages photographic records of infrastructure from the Gungahlin Town Centre down to road signage on Tuggeranong Parkway. The second is the ACT Planning directorate's property image database, which holds images tied to development applications lodged through the Access Canberra portal on Challis Street in Dickson.

Neither directorate has publicly disclosed the exact file counts, but sources familiar with the audit — who were not authorised to speak on the record — indicated the total number of flagged duplicates runs into the tens of thousands. The ACT Government's Digital Strategy and Services division, which sits within the Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate, is overseeing the remediation work. A formal update is expected to go to the Government Services Committee before the end of July.

The Australian National University's digital curation team at the Chifley Library has been consulted informally about best-practice approaches to image deduplication at scale, given the university's own experience managing the large photographic collections held in its archives on Acton Peninsula. ANU is not a contracted party in the government project, but the cross-sector knowledge-sharing reflects the relatively small professional community working on these problems in Canberra.

What Happens Next — and What It Means for Residents

For most Canberrans, the practical effect surfaces when dealing with the Access Canberra development application portal or requesting records under freedom of information. Duplicate images attached to property files have, in at least some cases this year, caused delays when officers had to manually verify which photograph represented the current state of a site. The deduplication work should reduce those processing times once complete.

The remediation program is using automated hashing tools — software that generates a unique fingerprint for each image file and flags exact or near-exact copies — before human reviewers make final deletion decisions. That two-stage process is slower than a fully automated purge but guards against accidentally removing a file that is visually similar but substantively different, such as a before-and-after photograph of a construction site on Flemington Road in Mitchell.

The directorate has not announced additional staffing for the project. Existing digital records officers are absorbing the work, which has raised questions internally about whether the October deadline is realistic given competing priorities, including preparations for the light rail Stage 2B planning documentation that the ACT Government expects to lodge in the second half of this year.

Residents who have submitted development applications recently and are waiting on responses should not expect immediate changes to processing times. The audit and remediation process is happening in backend systems. The Access Canberra portal on Challis Street continues to accept and process applications on its normal schedule. The government has indicated it will publish a summary of the audit's findings as part of its quarterly digital governance reporting, with the next report due in August.