20

42. A special branch to deal with Regulations and Information, experience shows to be necessary. Its activities touch on the work of all branches. Co-ordination of action on 1.C.A.0. decisions and recommendations and their translation into legislation, regulations, notices to airmen, and other publications is a most important part of the function of civil aviation administration to-day. It requires a wide general knowledge of aviation and ability to translate practical issues into language. It necessitates close liaison with the legal advisers of Government. Intelligence, general publicity, and other international relationships are conveniently handled by the same branch. It is, of course, possible to separate Information and Publications from Regulations, but they are common in requiring the same wide knowledge and contact with all branches, and it is undesirable to create too many branches. 43. The Administration Branch should be responsible for budget, accounts, stores accounting, establishments, the promulgation and supervision of general government rules and procedures, records, office organisation, equipment, &c., both in the headquarters and the rapidly increasing outstations of the Directorate. 44. Training, both as a long-term and a short-term problem, is especially important. It embraces the work of flying clubs, training by operating companies, special schools which are likely to be necessary for the production of specialised personnel of all kinds essential to the growth of civil aviation, and correlation of training with aeronautical education in the Universities and elsewhere. With it is associated the establishment of the standards necessary for licensed and unlicensed specialist personnel and their examination. Experience shows that this can be more efficiently handled by a special branch, rather than by the dispersal of the activity over a number of different sections allocated to different officers, as at present. 45. The duties of the Controller of Air Navigation under these proposals are distributed between the Director of Training and the Director of Regulations and Information. 46. The Air Services and Operations Branch embraces the duties now allocated to the Controller of Operations, so far as they may be retained, as well as the duties of the Economic Research and Intelligence Section. It has been emphasised above that the Civil Aviation Directorate should be organised to deal not only with technical problems in the operation of air transport but economic analyses and studies (vide paragraph 29). This Branch should also be responsible for the development of other commercial activities —e.g., air survey, crop dusting, forest protection, &c.