The meeting's goals, however, go beyond just reviewing action items and progress reports. It may provide a forum for debating objectives and best practises, according to Norman Eisen, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former senior ethics and government affairs attorney in the Obama White House. Eisen claims that senior officials routinely discuss their intended course of action at meetings before either supporting them or denouncing them if they are not followed out. Meetings provide opportunities for people to understand and make choices while speaking with their neighbours and coworkers, according to Mark Malloch-Brown, a former minister and the UK's ambassador to the UN.