Now we hear that the U.S. Department of Defense has joined the Veteran's Administration in tightening up its meetings policies, with an immediate ban on non-DOD conferences through the rest of the year (with some exceptions), and a tightened-up policy starting in January. Will the rippling out of aftershocks from the General Services Administration scandal never end?
Au contraire, I think we can expect to see government attendance at meetings continue to take hits as our newly elected and re-elected politicians try to deal with a looming threat of sequestration and find all those loopholes and excesses they were talking about ad nauseum for the past many months. It's all-too-easy to say meetings aren't essential and so are ripe for the cutting, even though you and I know differently.
Are you ready to tell your elected officials the business value of meetings? Are you ready to defend what you do for a living? I hope so, because, though I hate to say it, I only see this trend growing, and possibly spreading to state employees as well, depending on how the political wind blows.
Here's hoping I'm wrong.
