How San Francisco's City Agencies Spent Years Paying Twice for the Same Stock Photos

San Francisco city departments have been quietly licensing the same stock photographs, graphic assets and digital imagery from multiple vendors simultaneously, sometimes paying two or three separate contractors for rights to a single image used across public-facing websites, printed brochures and BART station transit ads. The Office of the Controller flagged the practice in internal budget reviews dating to fiscal year 2023-24, and the Department of Technology is now leading a consolidation effort aimed at eliminating what procurement specialists call duplicate image licensing — a problem that has cost the city an estimated amount that officials have declined to specify publicly while the audit is ongoing.

The issue matters now because San Francisco is under acute fiscal pressure heading into the 2026-27 budget cycle, with the Board of Supervisors still negotiating over cuts to the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and the Municipal Transportation Agency. Every dollar saved on administrative waste is a dollar that does not have to come from Muni service hours or shelter beds at facilities like the Navigation Center on 13th Street in SoMa. The duplicate image problem is, in isolation, a modest line item — but it is emblematic of a broader fragmentation in how the city procures digital goods and services across its more than 50 departments.

The roots of the problem stretch back to the early 2010s, when individual departments began building their own websites and digital communications teams with little central coordination. The San Francisco Department of Public Health, which maintains several distinct web presences for programs ranging from Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital to community mental health clinics in the Tenderloin, licensed stock imagery independently of the Recreation and Parks Department, which was simultaneously purchasing overlapping content for GoldenGatePark.com promotional materials. The San Francisco Public Library system, operating 28 branch locations, ran its own separate image subscription through fiscal year 2022 before partially consolidating with the city's master vendor list.

How the Duplication Took Root

Digital procurement in San Francisco long operated on a department-by-department basis because the city's Administrative Code gave department heads significant autonomy over technology contracts below certain thresholds. Contracts under $10,000 — which covers most annual stock photo subscriptions — did not require competitive bidding or cross-departmental review. A photo subscription at one agency had no visibility to a neighboring department making the same purchase the following week. By 2022, the Department of Technology had identified more than 30 separate image licensing agreements across city agencies, many covering the same commercial libraries from providers that dominate the market.

The San Francisco Digital Services team, housed at City Hall and formally stood up in 2019, began pushing for a unified digital asset policy as part of its broader SF.gov consolidation project. That effort brought several department websites under a single content management framework, which made duplicate licensing more visible — you could see the same Getty image appearing on three different city pages, each paid for separately. But the fixes remained voluntary, and departments with legacy systems or dedicated communications staff often continued their existing vendor relationships.

What the Consolidation Push Looks Like Now

The Department of Technology issued an internal directive in March 2026 asking all city agencies to report active image licensing agreements by April 30. The goal is a single enterprise license negotiated centrally, with access allocated across departments through a shared portal. Similar consolidation models have been used by New York City's Department of Citywide Administrative Services and by Chicago's Department of Assets, Information and Services, both of which reported administrative savings after centralizing digital content procurement.

For San Francisco residents, the practical effect should be invisible — city websites will still show photographs of Dolores Park, the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge. The difference will be in whether the city paid for those images once or three times. Departments have until September 1, 2026 to migrate to any new centralized framework under the current timeline, though budget negotiations and the ongoing MTA reform process could push that deadline. Officials at the Department of Technology have not yet publicly named a preferred vendor or announced contract terms, and the Controller's office has said a full audit report will be released before the end of the calendar year.