ACT Government's Digital Archive Overhaul Hits a Snag Over Duplicate Images This Week

A duplicate image problem buried inside the ACT Government's central digital asset management system has forced administrators to pause a planned July rollout of updated records-sharing protocols across at least four directorates. The issue, identified during a routine internal audit completed in late June, centres on tens of thousands of image files stored in duplicate or triplicate across separate agency databases — consuming server space, complicating freedom-of-information requests, and undermining the integrity of the territory's public archive.

The timing is awkward. The ACT Government has been pushing since early 2025 to consolidate digital records under a unified cloud-based framework, part of a broader modernisation program designed to cut storage costs and comply with updated National Archives of Australia guidelines that took effect on 1 January 2026. Duplicate image files are not a new headache for government IT teams, but the scale uncovered this week — sources familiar with the audit place the count in excess of 40,000 files across shared drives — has added an unplanned remediation step to a project already running behind schedule.

What Went Wrong and Where

The problem is traced partly to legacy workflows inside the ACT's Infrastructure and Transport Directorate, which operates out of offices on Constitution Avenue, and the Transport Canberra and City Services cluster based in Tuggeranong. Both directorates have historically maintained independent image libraries for infrastructure photography, light rail construction records, and public event documentation. When those libraries were migrated to a shared environment in late 2024, deduplication software failed to flag image files that had been resaved under different filenames — a known limitation of the tool used at the time.

The Australian National University's Digital Humanities Hub in Acton has separately flagged a related problem. The Hub holds a research partnership with ACT Libraries — which operates branches including the Belconnen Community Library on Benjamin Way and the Gungahlin branch on The Valley Avenue — to digitise historical photographs of Canberra's development. Duplicate images from that project have also been swept into the audit's scope, complicating what should have been a straightforward handoff of digitised assets to the territory's public collection.

Digital asset specialists put the cost of proper deduplication and metadata remediation for a dataset of this size at between $80,000 and $150,000 depending on the tooling chosen, though the ACT Government has not publicly disclosed a remediation budget. The National Archives of Australia's Digital Continuity 2025 policy — a framework that federal and territory agencies are expected to align with — explicitly requires that duplicate records be identified and disposed of according to approved disposal authorities, meaning the territory has a compliance obligation, not just a housekeeping one.

What Agencies Are Doing Now

The Directorate for Chief Minister, Treasury and Economic Development has reportedly convened a working group to assess tooling options, with a recommendation expected before the end of July. Three commercial deduplication platforms are understood to be under review, though no contracts have been signed and no vendor has been publicly named. The July rollout of the broader records-sharing protocols has been pushed to October at the earliest.

For public servants and researchers who rely on the shared image libraries — particularly those working on planning documents for the Gungahlin to Civic light rail Stage 2A corridor — the practical effect is limited access to certain image sets while the audit's findings are processed. Staff have been directed to submit image requests through a manual workflow via their directorate's records team in the interim.

Anyone with an active FOI request touching photographic records lodged with the ACT Government since 1 April 2026 should check the status of their application. The ACT Information Commissioner's office, located on Moore Street in the city, has the power to extend processing timelines where systemic records issues are documented — and the current audit may provide grounds for some agencies to seek extensions on pending requests. Applicants can contact the Commissioner's office directly to clarify whether their request is affected.