The first government bureau to use punch cards to collect data was the U.S. Census Bureau. Herman Hollerith developed punched card data processing technology specifically for the 1890 U.S. Census, which allowed the bureau to tabulate census data much faster and more accurately than previous manual methods. This innovation involved transferring census information onto punched cards that were then read by electromechanical tabulating machines, significantly speeding up data processing and reducing the time needed to complete the census

. Thus, the U.S. Census Bureau was the pioneering government entity to apply punch card technology for data collection and processing.