Plan the establishment of a State Computing Centre and in the interim, control purchases of computing equipment by Public Service developments. The Department of Health Services had introduced punch-card sorting machines to support their child health program in 1956. In 1966 the staff were moved to the Public Service Commissioner's Office when an agreement was reached to process data on behalf of the State Public Service on equipment of the Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics. In 1975 Cabinet decided to establish a State Computing Centre and the Computer Policy Committee was established to plan and implement a facility based on the existing ADP section. The section moved to Treasury as the Computer Services Branch in 1976 but the Committee remained within the Public Service Board Department and was chaired by the Board Chairman. It had control over equipment purchases in the interim. With the exception of Forestry and the Hydro-Electric Commission, which already had computer sections, the Committee discouraged the introduction of departmental systems, favouring a central bureau. It was 1980 before Treasury obtained the hardware for a major computung centre and in the interim several departments had succeeded in developing their own systems. As a result Cabinet decided, in November 1980, to reconstitute the committee to oversee the operations of the 3 major bureaux within the Public Service: Treasury's State Computer Centre, Education's Elizabeth Computer Centre, and the Transport Commissions computer branch. Following further discussions this decision was revised on 27 January 1981 and the Committee became the Computer Policy Advisory Committee with a wider brief and membership drawn partly from computing specialists outside the Public Service.~