The Way Government Should Be

¶ … attend and observe a healthcare committee. As part of the assignment, the author is to have observed how the meeting was conducted, how decisions were come to and the general procedures that were used overall. The author of this report did precisely that and learned a great deal. What follows in this report is a summary of those observations and the decorum that the author of this report witnessed. While some healthcare committee decisions and meetings are surely droll and routine, there are some very important decisions being made and items considered in these meetings.

One thing that the author of this report viewed straight away was that the decorum and sense of order in the committee meeting was extremely palpable and noticeable. Before the meeting came to order, the people were relaxed, affable and happy to see each other. However, it was like someone flipped a switch once the meeting started because everyone changed modes and it was "all business," so to speak. This is not to say that the author of this report was entirely surprised as the author is sure that many to most meetings of committees like this are of this level of maturity and decorum. However, healthcare is something that brings people to be very impassioned and strident at times. There were certainly points of disagreement and debate as the meeting rolled on but they were usually very minor and they were discussed in a very civil way. As stated by the NCSL, the focus was on the issues rather than the person speaking at any given time (NCSL, 2015).

Speaking of that, this is something else the author of this report would center on. When a subject would come up to the floor, the people that wished to say something had a pre-determined amount of time to speak their mind. If people went over by a few seconds, it was not considered a big deal. A tone would sound to indicate that time had elapsed. Every single time that happened (two or three times), the speaker would conclude their current fault and yield the floor. Nobody had to be hushed or controlled as there was a strict adherence to the procedure at all times. Of course, speaking on a subject was not mandatory. On many of the issues, nobody had much of anything to say and there was either a quick summary of what had happened and/or a quick vote to formally address what was going on. One other thing that the author noticed was that there was a person in the room, surely the "meeting minutes" person, who was taking down everything that was happening including who said what, how votes did or did not go and so forth. Prior meeting minutes were cited by the leader of the committee, so the documentation of that person is surely used for future meetings (Wild Apricot, 2015).