Perth's Duplicate Image Problem: The Key Decisions That Will Shape What Comes Next

Thousands of duplicate image files are clogging the digital systems of Perth metropolitan councils, state government agencies and major institutions, forcing administrators to make urgent decisions about data storage, compliance and retrieval before a wave of new infrastructure projects — from Metronet station rollouts to AUKUS-related Stirling Naval Base expansions — generates another flood of records.

The issue matters now because Western Australia is mid-cycle on several of the largest capital programs in the state's history. Every new Metronet station, every planning approval along the Morley-Ellenbrook line corridor, every engineering photograph filed at the Department of Transport generates image records that, without consistent deduplication protocols, multiply across shared drives and cloud environments. Storage costs are real. So are the compliance risks under the State Records Act 2000, which governs how Western Australian public bodies manage, keep and dispose of official records.

Where the Problem Is Sharpest

Two institutions illustrate the challenge well. The City of Perth, which manages the central business district from its offices on Alastair Street, has been migrating legacy asset management records into a unified system since at least 2023. Council officers have flagged internally that image duplication across inspection records and heritage documentation is among the more stubborn migration problems. Meanwhile, Fiona Stanley Hospital in Murdoch — one of the largest public hospitals in the Southern Hemisphere by bed count — manages medical imaging records under the South Metropolitan Health Service. Duplicate studies, where the same scan appears under multiple accession numbers due to system transfers or patient re-registrations, create administrative overhead and carry patient safety implications when clinicians pull records under time pressure.

The real estate sector adds another dimension. Realestate.com.au and Domain both serve the Perth market, and agencies from Subiaco to Ellenbrook routinely upload listing photography multiple times across campaigns, creating duplication at the platform level as well as within the agencies' own content management systems. With Perth's median house price sitting above $800,000 through the first half of 2026 and transaction volumes remaining elevated due to interstate migration and defence-related housing demand near Rockingham and Henderson, the volume of listing imagery entering the market each month is significant.

The Decisions That Cannot Wait

Three choices now confront the agencies most exposed. The first is procurement: whether to deploy automated deduplication software at the point of ingestion — when images enter a system — or to run retrospective cleanup operations on existing archives. Retrospective work is slower and more expensive per file but allows organisations to audit what they already hold. The State Library of Western Australia, based on Francis Street in Northbridge, has experience with exactly this kind of retrospective cataloguing through its digitisation programs, and its methodology is available as a reference model for other agencies.

The second decision is governance. Who owns the deduplication mandate inside each organisation? Without a named records manager or digital asset officer holding accountability, cleanup projects stall. The Department of Finance's Whole of Government Technology Strategy, which covers state agency ICT spending, is one lever the Cook government could pull to standardise requirements across agencies rather than leaving each body to solve the problem independently.

The third decision is timing. The Metronet Morley-Ellenbrook line is scheduled to open in stages from late 2026, and the planning and construction photography already generated for stations at Noranda and Bennett Springs runs to tens of thousands of images across multiple contractor systems. Waiting until after opening to address duplication means inheriting a larger, messier archive. Acting before opening — ideally by the September quarter — gives agencies a cleaner baseline.

For organisations watching this unfold, the practical path forward involves three steps: audit current storage to establish a baseline file count, test at least one automated deduplication tool against a sample archive before committing to full deployment, and assign a named officer with a reporting line to the chief information officer. None of those steps requires new legislation. They require decisions, and the window to make them cleanly is shrinking.