ACT Government's Digital Archives Tackle Duplicate Image Crisis This Week

The ACT Government's digital records teams have spent the better part of this week running automated deduplication checks across shared image repositories used by at least a dozen directorates, a process that has exposed years of redundant storage and raised fresh questions about how the territory manages its visual content.

The work matters now because the ACT's whole-of-government Digital Infrastructure Strategy, which entered its second implementation phase in January 2026, specifically requires agencies to audit and rationalise shared assets before the end of the financial year on 30 June — a deadline several directorates reportedly missed, prompting the current scramble.

What the Clean-Up Looks Like on the Ground

The Territory Records Office, based on Rudd Street in Civic, has been coordinating with the ACT Digital Services division to identify duplicate image files sitting across platforms including the whole-of-government SharePoint tenancy and the DataACT portal. The problem is not trivial: legacy uploads from campaigns run by Transport Canberra, the Housing ACT program, and the former Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate have left overlapping image sets tagged inconsistently across systems.

Transport Canberra's Light Rail Stage 2 communications team is among those affected. Visual assets documenting construction progress along the Northbourne Avenue corridor — stretching from Alinga Street toward the Dickson interchange — had been uploaded separately by at least three different project teams, creating storage bloat and version-control headaches for staff trying to locate current images for public-facing materials.

The Australian National University's Digital Humanities Hub, based on Fellows Road in Acton, has been watching the process with interest. The Hub works alongside ACT government bodies on several joint archiving projects, and staff there have long argued that the territory's image metadata standards lag behind best practice. The hub's own collections, which include historical photography from the early National Capital Development Commission era, use the Dublin Core metadata standard — a framework the ACT government has not yet mandated territory-wide.

Numbers Behind the Problem

Deduplication exercises run by comparable jurisdictions give a rough sense of scale. When the Victorian Government undertook a similar rationalisation of its Digital Asset Management System in 2024, it found roughly 34 percent of stored image files were duplicates or near-duplicates, according to the Victorian Department of Government Services' published review. Applying that rough benchmark to the ACT's situation — where the consolidated SharePoint tenancy holds material from 18 directorates — suggests the volume of redundant files could be substantial, though the ACT has not yet published its own figures.

Storage costs are one driver. Microsoft Azure blob storage, which underpins much of the ACT government's cloud infrastructure, is priced in ways that penalise unmanaged duplication over time. Beyond cost, the practical risk is that public communications staff pull outdated images — pre-construction renders of Gungahlin town centre, for example, rather than current photographs — because search results surface duplicates indiscriminately.

The Canberra Institute of Technology, which trains digital records management professionals through its Woden campus, updated its Certificate IV in Library and Information Services curriculum earlier this year to include a dedicated module on image deduplication and digital asset governance. That update reflects growing demand from ACT government agencies seeking staff with exactly these skills.

For public servants and communications teams working out of offices in Barton, Phillip or the City Hill precinct, the practical advice coming from the Territory Records Office is straightforward: hold off on uploading new campaign images to shared drives until the deduplication sweep is complete, expected by 18 July. After that date, the new mandatory tagging protocol — requiring a minimum of five metadata fields including date captured, directorate, project code, rights status and subject keywords — will apply to all new uploads. Agencies that missed the 30 June audit deadline have been given until 31 August to comply or face escalation to the ACT Auditor-General's office, according to internal guidance circulated this week.