TAMS was formed on 1 July 2006 from the merger of the Department of Urban Services, Environment ACT, Australian Capital Tourism, Sport and Recreation ACT, ACTION, Canberra Stadiums and parts of the Office of Sustainability into a single department.
[4][5] In October 2015, the ACT government announced that they were planning to form a form a standalone public transport directorate known as Transport Canberra, merged from ACTION buses and Capital Metro Agency (CMA), the agency in charge of planning the Canberra light rail project.
[8] As of September 2019[update], TCCS operated under four areas of responsibilities, which are:[1] The directorate is responsible to Chris Steel, Minister for City Services, Recycling and Waste Reduction, Roads and Active Travel, and Transport.
[2] Emma Thomas was the inaugural and previous director-general until her retirement from the ACT public service in April 2019.
Originally planned to be a standalone government directorate, it was later changed to be a division of the newly created TCCS.