This series appears to be the first system created by The Federal Capital Office, Melbourne. The commencement date range coincides with the appointment of Walter Burley Griffin as Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction on 18 October 1913. The records deal with various matters concerned with the Federal Capital Territory
particularly the siting and planning of buildings such as Parliament House, the Arsenal, churches, hotels, schools and the railway. The contents of some of the records date back to 1909, when it was decided to use officers of the Department of Home Affairs to design and construct the Capital City, (a decision that was subsequently revised in 1912).
 
The early practice of registering single folios resulted in a certain amount of top-numbering and various stamps belonging to the Administrator Federal Territory and Department of Home Affairs were used for these registration purposes. During 1916, the square shaped stamp of the Federal Capital Office, Melbourne superseded the other stamps, but it does not appear that this stamp was used to register the files of the series.
 
Instead the files were organised into a functional classification controlled by an alphabetical arrangement using variations of the letters B-E, as for example CBBA = Services - General; or BDCA = Administration - General; or EBBE = Accomodation - Railway. In the original accession documentation (CP 298), this control system is attributed to Walter Burley Griffin personally. The file covers themselves, where extant, were mainly of white linen reinforced material labelled with blue printing, ie, "Commonwealth of Australia; Department of Home Affairs; File of Copies; Subject:". Some blue cardboard Duo-Quick binders were also used.  
The holdings of this series were reviewed by Arrangement and Description, Records Control and Description, Australian Archives, ACT Regionl Office in June 1994 (job P93/525). The peculiar control system had resulted in items becoming physically disarranged and many duplicate access re-examinations for the same item. (There were 36 entries on ANGAM2 for the 21 items in this series). The items were re-arranged definitively, in accordance with the original control imposed on them. The original control number appears as the "Alternative Item Number" field on ANGAM2.