Data Strategy Briefing — Google releases COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports

Executive briefing: On 3 April 2020 Google began publishing COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports that chart changes in visits to categories such as retail, workplaces, grocery, transit, and parks. The reports aggregate Google Maps location history with differential privacy and geographic thresholds so authorities can gauge physical-distancing effectiveness without exposing individual user paths.

What changed

• Country- and region-level PDFs are updated regularly, showing percentage changes from a pre-pandemic baseline for six venue categories.
• Google applies noise injection, minimum sample sizes, and suppression rules to prevent re-identification while still surfacing trend lines.
• Data is drawn from opt-in location history, and Google states the program is time-limited to the COVID-19 public-health emergency.

Why it matters

• Public-health teams can target interventions such as transit headway changes or workplace occupancy limits using near-real-time mobility baselines.
• Enterprises referencing the reports for workforce planning must account for privacy constraints and avoid combining them with identifiable datasets.
• The release sets expectations for transparent methodology and governance when using mobility data for epidemiological modeling.

Action items for operators

• Document how external mobility indicators complement internal badge, Wi-Fi, or scheduling data before altering workplace safety policies.
• Validate that any derivative analyses respect Google’s aggregation thresholds and cannot be linked back to individual device signals.
• Establish retention limits and approval workflows for storing or sharing mobility-derived insights with public agencies.