Bendigo Council Moves to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Plaguing City's Digital Archive This Week

The City of Greater Bendigo confirmed this week it has engaged a Melbourne-based digital records firm to strip thousands of duplicate images from its centralised content management system, after an internal audit found the archive had ballooned to more than 340,000 files — roughly 40 per cent of them redundant copies of the same photographs.

The problem has been building since at least 2019, when the council migrated legacy image databases from multiple departments into a single platform without first deduplicating the files. Planning applications, heritage assessments, tourism campaigns and infrastructure records all fed into the same repository over those seven years, layering copies on top of copies until search functions slowed and storage costs climbed. The council's annual digital infrastructure spend has risen by 22 per cent since that migration, according to figures tabled at the June ordinary council meeting.

The timing matters because two significant Bendigo institutions are mid-project and relying on clean digital asset access right now. Bendigo Health's capital expansion program — centred on the new $630 million Bendigo Hospital redevelopment on Lucan Street — uses the council's shared image library for public communications and heritage documentation of the surrounding Violet Street precinct. Meanwhile, La Trobe University's Bendigo campus on Edwards Road has a joint archival agreement with the council covering regional cultural images, and staff there flagged the duplication issue to IT administrators in May after a routine records request returned 214 near-identical photographs of the Charing Cross intersection.

What the Audit Found, and What It Will Cost

The audit, completed on June 27, identified 138,400 duplicate or near-duplicate image files. The worst-affected folders relate to the Bendigo Art Gallery on View Street, where successive event photography uploads since 2020 were never reconciled. The gallery's winter exhibition program generates roughly 2,000 new images per season, and archivists estimate that fewer than half have unique filenames, making automated deduplication tools partially blind to them.

The council has contracted Digital Clarity Group to run a phased cleanup through August and September. The $85,000 contract covers automated hash-matching of exact duplicates in phase one, followed by manual review of visually similar images flagged by AI-assisted software in phase two. Any images tied to Aboriginal cultural heritage records — a sensitive category given Dja Dja Wurrung Country obligations under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 2006 — will be handled separately under a dedicated protocol developed with the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation.

Storage costs were running at approximately $4,200 per month before the project began. The council's IT team estimates the cleanup will cut that bill by around 35 per cent once complete, meaning the $85,000 outlay should recover itself within four years on storage savings alone, before accounting for staff-hour efficiencies.

What Happens Next for Bendigo's Digital Records

The immediate practical effect for residents and businesses is minimal — public-facing portals on the council website remain operational. But planning applicants lodging heritage assessments in the Hargreaves Street Mall precinct or the Golden Square neighbourhood have been advised to allow an extra five business days for image verification until the cleanup concludes, as archivists cross-reference submissions manually during the transition period.

From October 1, the council intends to enforce a new file-naming protocol requiring all uploaded images to carry a unique identifier tied to project number, date and department code. Staff in the planning and environment directorate will receive a half-day training session at the Municipal offices on Lyttleton Terrace before the protocol goes live.

The Bendigo Regional Archives Centre on Peel Street South will also adopt the new naming standard, extending it to the physical-to-digital scanning program that has digitised more than 18,000 historical prints since 2022. Archivists there say it will prevent a repeat of the duplication problem as scanning volumes increase ahead of the program's 2028 completion target.

Residents with concerns about specific records — particularly those relating to heritage properties or cultural sites — can contact the council's records team directly through the Lyttleton Terrace office from Monday to Friday.