It might me. If they are just called at random things are fine. However if you do a little work you can figure out who will support whatever position you want.

A few months ago I listened to one "expert panel" called before congress about high speed trail. Most of the people didn't have any useful expertise on the subject. There was the union rep who considered anything good so long as it makes jobs - if they could dig and refill the same hole all day that would be good). There was the you are not listening to NIMBYs enough - without any acknowledgement on how much NIMBYs had been listened to. There were several people who define HSR so slow that Amtrak meets it.

I believe the above is typical of congressional hearings, though I don't have 4 hours to sit through them on a regular basis. (I had a lot of long compiling tasks to do that day)

Yes, it is. And can also result in decisions that benefit your local shipping exec over any other considerations. Informality in cases like this is just another way to say "completely avoids oversight. "