Actually the entire theme of Yes Minister, one of the best parodies of how the government is run is that not a single important decision or discussion is had in a public forum. Many episodes involve burying particularly incriminating official records.

Not only that when learning business one comment made was

Decisions are not made in meetings they are made in discussions before the meetings. Going into a meeting and thinking that your comments will change things is being naive.

From that the thing to be learnt is that you have to have off the record meetings first to convince the powers that be.

Now at least some of these meetings are recorded via WhatsApp and leaks before they never were.

Also see how IBM and Oracle get business - they take the senior C level managers out to lunch or golf and persuade them. They don't bother talking to the people who could evaluate if it was a good deal technically.