Engaging with the Government

With our company headquarters in the Northern VA/DC area, you would think we interact with the government on a usual basis. Surprisingly, we are one of the few industries where the government does not require a license in order to perform maintenance on your car. ASE was created to fill that gap, to safeguard consumers so they know the individual working on their car has met national standards to work on their vehicle. We are a voluntary certification entity that develops tests that technicians in the auto industry take to get certified.

Basically, the government interaction we have is with the Department of Labor, Department of Education, Perkins Funding and the occasional grant. When it comes to engaging with the government through forms of new media, we typically use it to see what is going on with issues that our industry face: career and technical education (CTE) schools being defunded, certifications not being required, Right to Repair Act, and the like. We follow these topics of interest closely and adapt to whatever changes have been made. Since ASE is “Switzerland” in the automotive industry, we typically steer clear of posting any government-related news, unless it has a direct impact on ASE or it’s certified technicians.

How do government entities weed through all of the news for the facts? How do they know what’s appropriate to post and what isn’t? How do they keep track of their target audience’s feelings on posts when they have so many eyes on them? I’m hoping our guest speaker could answer these questions.