ACT Government's Duplicate Image Problem: What Happened This Week

The ACT Government's digital services team flagged this week that a systematic review of duplicate imagery across its public-facing websites had identified hundreds of redundant files clogging content management systems, slowing load times and creating accessibility headaches for users relying on screen readers. The audit, which began in earnest in late June 2026, is now moving into its replacement phase.

The timing matters. The federal government's Digital Transformation Agency has been pressing state and territory bodies to meet updated Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — specifically WCAG 2.2 — before the end of the 2026 calendar year. Duplicate images that carry identical or missing alt-text descriptions are a direct compliance failure under those guidelines, and Canberra's territory government is not the only jurisdiction scrambling to get its house in order before the deadline bites.

Where the Problem Is Concentrated

The bulk of the duplicated content sits across three major ACT government digital properties: the Access Canberra service portal, the Transport Canberra website — which covers light rail and bus network information — and the ACT Health directorate's public pages. Transport Canberra's site in particular has accumulated years of overlapping route maps, vehicle imagery, and promotional photos tied to successive light rail announcements, including material from the still-contested Stage 2 corridor debate between the City and Commonwealth Park precincts.

The University of Canberra's Bruce campus and the Australian National University in Acton both operate independently of the territory's systems, but digital communications staff at both institutions say they have been watching the ACT government's audit process closely. UC's marketing and communications team has been running its own image library rationalisation since February, after a governance review found that faculty websites held more than 4,000 duplicate or near-duplicate image files across its content management platform.

In Gungahlin, where the territory's fastest-growing residential precinct has generated a steady stream of planning and development photography over the past decade, the ACT Planning directorate's website holds multiple versions of the same aerial shots of the town centre, some dating to construction phases that finished years ago. Similar issues were identified on Belconnen community pages, where suburb profile images had been uploaded multiple times across different content editors with no central library governance.

What the Replacement Process Looks Like

The ACT government's digital team is working through a three-stage process: automated detection using file-hash matching, manual editorial review for images that are visually similar but technically distinct, and then staged replacement with properly tagged, accessibility-compliant versions sourced from a centralised image library being stood up on Shared Services infrastructure on the Canberra Avenue precinct in Fyshwick.

The Shared Services ICT unit has been allocated a budget envelope for the project from within existing digital modernisation funding approved in the 2025-26 ACT Budget, though the territory government has not published a specific line-item figure for this component of the work. The broader digital modernisation program has a publicly documented allocation, but the image audit sits within operational expenditure rather than capital.

For everyday Canberrans using Access Canberra to handle rates notices, vehicle registrations or planning queries, the practical effect of the cleanup should be faster page loads and better search results — the duplicate files have been creating indexing noise that pushed some legitimate service pages down in search rankings.

Residents in Tuggeranong and Woden who use the ACT government's community consultation portals have also occasionally hit broken image links when those portals are updated, a secondary symptom of the underlying library disorder. The replacement phase is expected to address most of those broken references by the end of August, according to the project timeline published on the ACT Digital Strategy webpage this week.

The practical advice for any ACT government employee or contractor who uploads content to a government site right now: hold off on adding new imagery until the Shared Services image library goes live, provisionally scheduled for late July. Adding fresh duplicates during an active cleanup only extends the timeline and compounds the compliance risk heading toward the December WCAG deadline.