The office block on Canberra's main avenue has largely been emptied of ACT public servants although planning and procurement departments remain, officials said on Tuesday.

The demolition is scheduled for early 2018 with the land sale to take place shortly after that.

But the decommissioning of the building will be a tricky as in the basement lies the ACT government's secondary data house.

While their primary data servers are located at Fyshwick, several important systems, including the one that runs Canberra's traffic lights, are housed at the Macarthur data house.

About $7.4 million was set aside in Tuesday's budget to decommission and relocate the services, although about $4 million will be sourced from existing ICT funding.

The sale of Macarthur House was flagged in 2014 as part of the Commonwealth's Asset Recycling Program.

The four-year Indicative Land Release Program highlighted in Tuesday's budget papers included 10 sites being sold under the Asset Recycling Program.

The budget papers suggested the sales would contribute more than 3000 sites for individual residences, as well as "significant" commercial and mixed-use releases.

The territory expected to reap $79 million from asset sales and $11 million in asset recycling incentive payments from the Commonwealth in 2016-17, the budget papers said. The money will be redirected into the light rail project.

Several slabs of land on the Northbourne corridor have been earmarked for demolition and sale under the asset recycling scheme.

Down the road from Macarthur house, the run-down Northbourne Flats in Turner and Braddon are also due to be demolished and redeveloped into residential housing. The sale was revealed in April although a development application for the demolition has not yet been lodged.

The Bega Flats site opposite the Canberra Centre in Reid will be razed and sold to make way for development, similar to the overhaul of the Currong and Allawah flats sites opposite.