Committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly or other form of organization.
[3] They can be a way to formally draw together people of relevant expertise from different parts of an organization who otherwise would not have a good way to share information and coordinate actions.
They can also be appointed with experts to recommend actions in matters that require specialized knowledge or technical judgment.
Sometimes these meetings are held through videoconferencing or other means if committee members are not able to attend in person, as may be the case if they are in different parts of the country or the world.
Duties include keeping the discussion on the appropriate subject, recognizing members to speak, and confirming what the committee has decided (through voting or by unanimous consent).
Using Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised (RONR), committees may follow informal procedures (such as not requiring motions if it is clear what is being discussed).
[13] In Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised (RONR), the motion to commit has three variations which do not turn a question over to a smaller group, but simply permit the assembly's full meeting body to consider it with the greater freedom of debate that is allowed to committees.
[18] Organizations with a large board of directors (such as international labor unions, large corporations with thousands of stockholders or national and international organizations) may have a smaller body of the board, called an executive committee, to handle its business.
However formed, an executive committee only has such powers and authority that the governing documents of the organization give it.
A conference committee in the United States Congress is a temporary panel of negotiators from the House of Representatives and the Senate.
[22] In the European Union (EU) legislative process, a similar committee is called a 'Conciliation Committee', which carries out the Trilogue negotiations in case the Council does not agree with a text amended and adopted by the European Parliament at a second reading.
A standing committee is a subunit of a political or deliberative body established in a permanent fashion to aid the parent assembly in accomplishing its duties, for example by meeting on a specific, permanent policy domain (e.g. defence, health, or trade and industry).
A standing committee is granted its scope and powers over a particular area of business by the governing documents.
[24] Standing committees meet on a regular or irregular basis depending on their function, and retain any power or oversight originally given them until subsequent official actions of the governing body (through changes to law or by-laws) disbands the committee.
The Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 greatly reduced the number of committees, and set up the legislative committee structure still in use today, as modified by authorized changes via the orderly mechanism of rule changes.
Typically, the standing committees perform their work throughout the year and present their reports at the annual meeting of the organization.
It is a part of governance methods often employed by corporate bodies, business entities, and social and sporting groups, especially clubs.
For example; a group of astronomers might be organized to discuss how to get the larger society to address near Earth objects.
A subgroup of engineers and scientists of a large project's development team could be organized to solve some particular issue with offsetting considerations and trade-offs.
"Central Committee" is the common designation of the highest organ of communist parties between two congresses.
