Enhancing Aviation Capacity: Expert Insights and Support

1. Panel 3 – How Experts Support Capacity Building Melvin Cintron Regional Director, ICAO North American, Central American and Caribbean Regional Office

2. “Capacity” is often one of the most critical and yet most abused words in the aviation spectrum Capacity building (or capacity development) is the process by which individuals and organizations obtain, improve, and retain the skills, knowledge, tools, equipment and other resources needed to do their jobs competently or to a greater capacity (About 615,000,000 results in google). Training is the process of teaching the new and/or present employees the basic skills they need to effectively perform their jobs. Alternatively speaking, training is the act of increasing the knowledge and skill of an employee for doing his/her job. (About 2,570,000,000 results in google). Training is defined by Wayne Cascio as “training consists of planned programs undertaken to improve employee knowledge, skills, attitude, and social behavior so that the performance of the organization improves considerably.” 2

3. “Capacity” is often one of the most abused words in the aviation spectrum With Capacity and Training so well defined within a simple search, you`d think that actual State needs versus expenditures to meet that need could be met and understood by anyone. Unfortunately, experience and data have shown that the opposite is more the reality which means States normally do not receive what they thought they would, but even worse they do not always know what they did not receive because of ambiguity in this terms, and generalities in identifying needs. Example: Capacity building is used in contracts as a famous catch phrase that make States /Authorities feel that they will end up with a comprehensive solution to a systemic problem that is faced by 90% of all developing States. But the contractors do not normally have put themselves out of a job as a general goal. Thus, capacity building can go from teaching someone to pat a passenger down for meeting Annex 17 requirements, all the way to actually developing capacity including State-centric, ICAO-complaint system to implement Annex 17. 3

4. How experts Support Capacity Building - ICAO • Where does ICAO stand on supporting Capacity Building - ICAO is in the midst of what I personally consider a great transformation of a stronger focus on being an accountable, performance-based organization providing value to all member States in all areas specially in Capacity building. This can be seen in all ICAO Bureaux; • ANB`s commitment to help States and their Authorities understand their capacity by developing tools to guide them and have these tools available to them • ATB`s comprehensive analyses of economic air transport data made available to States for economic decision-making support and briefing Senior leaders etc. • TCB/GAT with their focus on being the ICAO technical cooperation solution to our member States in their capacity building efforts, in part by: • working with all ICAO resources, and specifically the GAT office, • working with the Regional Offices that work directly with TCB/GAT and your State. • working and collaborating throughout the world with local authorities and institutions 4

5. “How experts Support Capacity Building” – OUR PANEL So what is a State to do? A starting option is to use this GACS-3 as a mind opening opportunity for helping you in our decision-making. Our panel will provide insights into this very important issue and maybe help you understand challenges and opportunities and maybe even help you identify needs, make clear expectations, metrics and deliverables and other such items. We will hear from our panel members discussions on these capacity building and related issues and will have some questions (and hopefully answers) that may benefit us all. Regarding ICAO and Capacity building, the following applies 5

6. THANKS QUESTIONS