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respect of civil aviation it is suggested that the Air Secretary should have a similar function, leaving to the Director of Civil Aviation functions and responsibilities as clearly established as those of the Chief of the Air Staff in relation to the Air Force. 6. To develop such an organisation it may be necessary to depart somewhat from precedent in the New Zealand Government organisation. If a Secretary of Government, being the head of a department of Government, had clearly defined powers, responsibilities, and functions (and we understand that no authoritative statement has ever been made on this subject), there would be nothing anomalous or impracticable in his exercising those functions on behalf of Government in respect of a number of activities, each the responsibility of a separate office, with a large degree of autonomy and headed by a director or other officer with defined powers and duties. 7. We recommend that the Civil Aviation Branch should cease to be a branch of the Air Department. To avoid confusion in the use of the word " department/' it could be called a " directorate," and it is proposed to refer to it as such in this report. In suggesting this separation and the definition of the relationship between the Air Secretary and the Air Department on the one hand and the Director of Civil Aviation and the Civil Aviation Directorate on the other hand, we have considered the organisation in the United Kingdom and other Dominions. We do not think that the organisation of the United Kingdom Government provides a parallel. 8. The Government of India organisation, with its small number of departments of Government, each with its group of satellite departments, directorates, or attached offices, provides a parallel which New Zealand might, with considerable advantage, adopt, at least so far as civil aviation is concerned. Civil aviation in India was the responsibility of the Minister of Communications- and the Communications Department, whose permanent head was a Secretary to Government (the Communications Secretary). The Secretary was assisted by Deputy Secretaries, Under-Secretaries, and a secretarial staff. The officers of the department were empowered, in varying degree, to express the decisions of Government, and were charged with the responsibility of co-ordinating the activities of the department with Government policy, including financial and general administration policy and rules. The Communications Department was responsible for the activities of three attached departments or directorates, each having a separate corporate existence, each headed by a Director General, each having complete technical autonomy and a large prescribed measure of administrative and financial autonomy, and each having responsibility to Government through the Communications Department for the administration of