ACT Government's Digital Asset Audit Flags Thousands of Duplicate Images Across Agency Websites

The ACT Government's Digital Experience team confirmed this week it has identified more than 4,000 duplicate or near-duplicate images embedded across agency websites, following a structured audit of the territory's shared content management platform that began in late June. The findings are now driving an active replacement program affecting at least a dozen directorates.

The timing is not accidental. The audit was triggered partly by preparations for a major overhaul of the act.gov.au portal, which the Digital Canberra division has flagged for staged rollout beginning in the third quarter of 2026. Duplicate images slow page load times, consume unnecessary server storage, and — critically — create compliance headaches under the ACT Government's own accessibility standards, which align with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. When the same image appears under multiple file names, alt-text descriptions are rarely consistent, meaning screen-reader users can receive contradictory or missing information depending on which version of a page they land on.

What the Audit Found — and Where the Problems Cluster

The bulk of the duplicated assets were traced to three main sources: legacy content migrated from old directorate-specific sites when the consolidated platform launched, stock photography licensed at different times by different teams without central coordination, and images uploaded by communications staff across offices on Constitution Avenue, London Circuit, and the Dickson Service Centre without checking the shared media library first.

Access Canberra, which handles a high volume of transactional web content, was identified as one of the heavier contributors to the duplication backlog. The Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate also appeared prominently in the audit log, particularly around planning and land release imagery tied to Gungahlin and Belconnen growth corridor communications published over the past three years.

The audit was conducted using automated image-fingerprinting tools that compare pixel-level similarity rather than relying solely on file name matching. That methodology matters because many duplicates had been renamed — sometimes simply given an underscore or a date suffix — making manual library searches effectively useless for catching them. The Digital Experience team has not publicly released the full audit report, but internal agency communications reviewed by The Daily Canberra confirm the 4,000-plus figure and the replacement timeline.

The Replacement Push: What Happens From Here

Each affected directorate has been asked to nominate a digital content lead by July 11 to co-ordinate replacements in partnership with the central Digital Canberra team. The preferred method is consolidating all preferred versions of an image into the shared Squiz Matrix library and redirecting or deleting orphaned copies — not simply uploading a fresh file on top of the existing stack, which was a documented failure mode from a similar exercise attempted in 2023.

The ACT Government currently licenses a shared Shutterstock subscription for general stock imagery, with an annual spend that a budget line in the 2025-26 ACT Budget supporting Services and Digital put at roughly $180,000 for whole-of-government digital asset licensing across several platforms. Cleaning up the library is expected to reduce redundant licence renewals for images that multiple teams have separately licensed without realising colleagues already held rights to the same asset.

For Canberrans, the practical effect should be faster-loading government service pages — particularly useful on the mobile connections that residents in outer suburbs like Casey and Throsby rely on when accessing planning or rates information on the go. Accessibility advocates, including groups that have long pressed the ACT Government through the Human Rights Commission's disability consultation channels, have welcomed the audit as overdue.

Directorates are expected to complete first-round replacements by August 29, ahead of the broader portal migration. Teams that miss the deadline will have outstanding duplicates archived automatically, potentially breaking image links embedded in older news releases and policy documents — an incentive the Digital Experience team is counting on to drive compliance without further mandates.