Government Meetings Still in Freefall

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Originally posted on meetingsnet.com

Corporate meetings have seen steady positive growth over the past year, but the government meetings segment continues to struggle, showing little sign of regaining its footing, at least not in the quarterly Meetings Outlook report published by Meeting Professionals International.

MPI asks planner and supplier respondents, "Compared to one year ago, which client segment of your organization's meeting and event-related business has seen the greatest decrease in activity?" In the Winter 2015 report, whose data was collected in November 2014, almost half of respondents saw government meetings in decline. That's even more than the 43 percent who reported declines in the August 2014 outlook, which itself was a dramatic increase over the 31 percent who saw declines in the May 2014 survey. (And in response to the converse question in the current report--asking which segment showed the greatest uptick--no one said government.)

It's well known that government meetings took a big hit after negative publicity about a mismanaged U.S. General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas in 2010.

Uproar about the meeting led to White House guidelines in May 2012 mandating a 30 percent decrease in government conference and travel spending and high-level approvals for attendance at outside meetings.

Adding to the challenges for the government meetings segment was sequestration--a series of automatic federal program spending cuts--in 2013, and a 16-day federal government shutdown in October 2013.

(In the good news department: Government agencies found out in January that there will be no sequestration program cuts in fiscal 2015--just as there were none in fiscal 2014.)

Still in the News
Government meetings are still making the news, now for the unintended consequences of nearly three years of mandated conference cuts and attendance approvals. A Washington Post article February 8 discussed the damage done:

"Three years after the Obama administration clamped down on travel and training... the restrictions are taking an unanticipated toll. Employees at a wide range of agencies say the rules are gumming up the machinery of government. While the government has not released data on how much agencies spent on travel and conferences before the crackdown, White House officials say the restrictions have saved close to $3?billion and ensured that taxpayers are not paying for more boondoggles. But these officials are also acknowledging that agencies have become too rigid."

Indeed, in a letter to the editor published February 9, Society of Government Meeting Professionals Executive Director and CEO Rob Bergeron reviewed the impact. "The resulting reality of the knee-jerk blanket restrictions in 2012 at first was agencies canceling education conferences at a cost that exceeded what the expense would have been to hold them," he wrote. "Government employees continue to be forced to spend more money for mission-critical training by attending multiple smaller conferences instead of by simply attending one conference at a significantly lower cost."

The number of canceled meetings was enormous. SGMP surveyed members in November 2013 and found that, due to the investigation of the GSA and resulting media coverage, 60 percent had postponed one or more meetings, 51 percent had canceled one or more meetings, and 53 percent had one or more meeting requests denied.

In his letter, Bergeron went on to emphasize the efforts of SGMP members to demonstrate a high standard of meeting management: "When planned and executed correctly, government meetings most certainly benefit citizens by making government more effective. There has been a strong increase in government meeting planners pursuing the Society of Government Meeting Professionals' Certified Government Meeting Professional (CGMP) designation, which plays a key part of the solution to wasteful spending by demonstrating a commitment to best practices."

SGMP will survey members about meetings and meeting attendance again this month.

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