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

The ACT Government's digital services branch began a structured audit this week of duplicate images embedded across territory websites and internal content management systems, following a directive from the Digital, Data and Technology Solutions (DDTS) directorate to reduce storage overhead and improve accessibility compliance ahead of a July 31 internal deadline.

The push matters now because the ACT is mid-way through a broader digital modernisation program that touches everything from the Access Canberra service portal to the planning and land authority's online maps. Redundant image files — in some cases the same photograph appearing dozens of times under different file names — slow page load times, complicate screen-reader compatibility, and create legal risk when image licensing metadata is lost in duplication. With the ACT's 2026-27 budget allocating funds toward digital infrastructure upgrades, cleaning up existing assets before new platforms go live is the sensible sequencing.

Where the Problem Shows Up Locally

The issue is particularly visible on two high-traffic government properties. The Transport Canberra website, which serves commuters researching light rail and bus routes including the Stage 2A corridor running through Civic toward Commonwealth Avenue, has accumulated multiple versions of route map graphics that were uploaded separately during successive timetable changes. Similarly, the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate's online portal — used heavily by developers and residents in growth suburbs like Gungahlin and Belconnen — contains duplicated zoning map images that date back to pre-2023 planning scheme iterations.

The National Library of Australia in Parkes, which partners with ACT government on some digitisation projects, has its own mature protocols for image deduplication built into its Trove platform. ACT digital teams have reportedly been examining that workflow as a reference model, though the territory's content management infrastructure differs significantly from Trove's archival environment.

For ACT public servants — who make up a large share of the territory's workforce and regularly use internal SharePoint environments and the whole-of-government intranet — the duplication problem has a second dimension. Staff uploading images to internal communications portals have, over years of remote and hybrid work arrangements, created parallel libraries of the same headshots, building photographs, and infographics. The University of Canberra's Centre for Creative and Cultural Research has been engaged by at least one directorate to consult on digital asset governance frameworks, though the scope and cost of that engagement have not been made public.

What the Audit Involves and What Comes Next

The deduplication process involves both automated hash-matching tools — which identify files with identical pixel data regardless of filename — and manual review for near-duplicate images where cropping or compression differs slightly. Hash-matching can handle bulk identification in hours; the manual component is where staff time accumulates. Based on comparable audits conducted by the Queensland Government's digital division in 2024, a mid-sized agency can expect to review several thousand flagged image pairs before a system is genuinely clean.

For Canberrans who interact with ACT government websites, the practical outcome should be faster page loads and fewer broken image placeholders — a persistent nuisance on some older departmental pages. Web accessibility standards under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, which ACT agencies are required to meet, also demand that duplicate or poorly tagged images not confuse screen readers used by people with vision impairment.

The July 31 internal deadline is tight. Directorates that miss it face a secondary review in September, at which point the DDTS branch has indicated it may apply centralised governance controls over image upload permissions — effectively limiting who can add new images to the whole-of-government content system without approval. That would represent a significant shift in how individual agencies manage their own digital presence, and some communications teams in Barton and Civic have already begun pre-emptive internal audits rather than wait for the central review to find problems for them.