‘Outcomes, not output’: Exco held 25% fewer meetings over John Lee’s tenure so far

Hong Kong’s top decision-making body has held 25 per cent fewer meetings in the first 3½ years of the current administration compared with the previous two governments, the South China Morning Post has found, with the group’s secretariat urging the public to focus on “outcomes of the work” rather than on the number of gatherings.The Executive Council Secretariat stopped short of commenting on the trend directly due to the principle of confidentiality, but said the government had been proactively engaging with non-official members at the early stages of policy formulation through informal briefings to make subsequent proceedings more efficient.According to official figures, the body convened 119 meetings and discussed 602 items over the first 3½ years of Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s tenure.The figure represented a 25 per cent drop in the number of meetings over the same period during the tenures of former leaders Leung Chun-ying and Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, when 159 and 158 meetings were held, respectively.In terms of items discussed, the figures stood at 909 and 729 during the first 3½ years of Leung and Lam’s administrations.Leung served as chief executive between 2012 and 2017, with Lam succeeding him before passing the torch to Lee in 2022.