ACT Government's Digital Archives Tackle Duplicate Image Problem After Years of Redundant Storage Costs

The ACT Territory Records Office completed a formal audit this week revealing that duplicate digital images — scanned documents, photographs, and planning files stored multiple times across different agency servers — have been consuming significant portions of the government's shared storage budget for at least three years. The audit, which wrapped up on July 2, identified redundant files spread across at least six directorates, including the Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate and the ACT Health Directorate.

The timing matters. The ACT government is mid-way through rolling out its Whole-of-Government Digital Strategy, a framework intended to consolidate agency data systems into a single integrated platform by 2028. Duplicate image files are a known obstacle: they inflate migration costs, slow search retrieval times, and complicate records compliance under the Territory Records Act 2002. Getting the problem under control now, before full migration begins, is materially cheaper than doing it after the fact.

Where the Problem Is Concentrated

The duplication is heaviest in planning and property records. Files related to development applications in the Gungahlin town centre and the Belconnen lakeside precinct — both areas with high construction volumes over the past decade — were scanned by multiple officers across different stages of the approvals process and saved under different file names without any deduplication check. The same aerial survey photographs of the Molonglo Valley development corridor were found stored independently by at least four separate teams, according to the audit's summary documentation.

Access Canberra, which processes licensing and regulatory paperwork from its shopfronts on Callam Street in Phillip and at Dickson, holds a separate tranche of the duplicated material — primarily identity documents and vehicle registration imagery that was digitised in two separate batches between 2019 and 2022 when the agency transitioned away from its legacy TRIM records system.

The Australian National University's digital preservation unit has previously published research estimating that unmanaged duplication in mid-size government archives can inflate long-term storage costs by between 20 and 35 per cent. While that figure applies to archival contexts broadly, it gives a sense of the fiscal exposure the ACT is managing. The Territory Records Office has not yet released its own cost estimate from this week's audit, but a briefing note circulated to directorates described the situation as requiring urgent remediation before the 2026-27 budget cycle closes in December.

What Happens Next

The proposed fix is a two-stage process. First, automated deduplication software — the same class of tool already used by the Australian Taxation Office and the Department of Home Affairs at the federal level — will be deployed across ACT government servers to flag identical or near-identical image files. Second, records officers within each directorate will manually review flagged files before deletion, a safeguard required under the Territory Records Act to prevent accidental destruction of legally mandated originals.

Training sessions for records officers are being scheduled through the ACT Public Service Commission for late July and August. Staff at the Canberra Institute of Technology's Gungahlin campus, which delivers digital records management qualifications to ACT government employees, have reportedly already updated their short-course curriculum to include deduplication workflows, though the institute had not confirmed that detail publicly by the time of publication.

For public servants dealing with large image-heavy files — particularly those working in planning, health, or licensing roles — the practical advice coming from the records office is straightforward: hold off on any major batch scanning projects until the new deduplication protocols are formalised, expected by the end of August. Running fresh scans into a system that is still being cleaned creates new redundancy and complicates the audit trail. The Territory Records Office is expected to publish interim guidance on its website within the fortnight.