Within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)’s Panel of Experts for the ILC is the Working Group for the Verification of Methods of Structure and Management (Chief: Shoken Miyama, former director general of the National Observatory of Japan). On June 27th, they met for their 6th meeting at MEXT where they discussed the draft for their final report. The report will show the need for systematic development of human resources in order to build a strong management structure for the ILC. The group plans to present their report at the general meeting of the Panel of Experts in July/August.

The ILC would be operated by an international research organization, but the budget required for would be of an immense scale. Hence, the draft indicates that it would be reasonable to create the organization by “mutual agreement through international treaties.” It also states that it would be preferable if member countries would make balanced contributions to the (additional) costs of preparing the surrounding area for the ILC.

As there are not many engineers in Japanese research labs, “we must broaden our search for workers with experience in large-scale international projects to other industries, and create a management structure that links together the research facility and private business.”

Chair Miyama and the working group staff will continue to revise the wording of the draft, and plan to present the report at the meeting of the Panel of Experts. The Japanese national government will take into account the deliberations being held at the panel as they make their decision on hosting the ILC sometime from the end of 2017 to 2018.