The meeting is also not just for reviewing action items or reporting on progress. It can be used as a forum to discuss projects and goals, and to share best practices, said Norman Eisen, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief ethics and government affairs adviser in the Obama White House. "For senior officials in particular, they often use meetings to make speeches, provide input, establish their policy priorities and then either stand behind them or criticize them if they don't follow through," Eisen said. "You do that through official reports and meetings with their colleagues and citizens." Likewise, Mark Malloch-Brown, a former UK ambassador to the United Nations and government minister, said he sees meetings as opportunities to understand and guide the "world we want to live in." "The private sector isn't set up this way, and governments are not set up this way," Malloch-Brown said. "If people don't take advantage.