Google app can track mobile employees

By Paul Hemsley

Management in local, state and federal government will be able to track mobile workers if they procure the Google Maps Coordinate application.

The app is an Android based program that allows employers to see where their team members or employees are located and assign tasks remotely.

Google Maps Coordinate senior product manager, Daniel Chu said the app is able to look at the worker’s location history and job history, so it enables an organisation to see how its team is deployed.

“Were there areas that we were sending people off the beaten path, if we should hire someone else to place there, and apply more data based decision making in terms of trying to figure out how to manage operations,” Mr Chu said.

Mr Chu said there have been government queries about Google Maps Coordinate in terms of state and local organisation.

“They have lots of people on a mobile basis whether it’s doing city services in terms of trying to accomplish tasks,” Mr Chu said.

Mr Chu said, however, that there has not been an active collaboration between Google and government bodies on the development of this product.

According to Mr Chu, due to the early stage of the app’s release, there are no government clients as of yet.

As for the app itself, jobs that have been assigned have full details including timestamps.

“It also allows the folks in the field to indicate their progress as they go through their jobs, a worker can either accept or decline the job based on their capacity,” Mr Chu said.

He said workers can see everything they need to accomplish and everything that’s been done.

“It’s extremely useful for an organisation to tell if someone is travelling to a job and actually the time that they’re spending on the job,” he said.

According to Mr Chu, in terms of security, the app has features built-in that all location data is fully encrypted, where the data is only for the use of the customer and not accessible to Google.

Mr Chu said for the end-user within the context of the business, a feature around schedule and visibility has been added, so the location can be switched off at the user’s discretion where Google Maps Coordinate shuts off.

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