Technology at the Heart: From Emergency WA to Manitoba’s MB Ready in 36 Hours
Tracks
Southport Room 1
| Monday, July 27, 2026 |
| 1:20 PM - 1:50 PM |
| Southport Room 1 |
Overview
Brad Birt & Kirstin Butcher, Genvis
Details
Three Key Learnings
1. The 36-Hour Decisions That Mattered—Speed under fire came from disciplined scope, explicit risk acceptance, clear governance, and public–private alignment. Genvis set a decisive tempo and streamlined approvals to keep value front and centre for communities.
2. Design Principles for Whole-Community Access—Accessibility is truly non-negotiable. Build for plain language, low bandwidth, and cultural inclusion, with simple feedback loops. Human oversight preserves clarity and accountability.
3. Genvis’ Reusable Foundations Deliver Safe Speed—Cudo patterns (multi agency workflows, configuration as code, and trusted data sharing) enabled Manitoba’s 36-hour deployment. Reuse reduces risk, keeps a single source of truth, and scales quickly across contexts.
Speaker
Brad Birt
Coo
Genvis
Technology at the Heart: From Emergency WA to Manitoba’s MB Ready in 36 Hours
Abstract
In emergencies, people don’t think about who operates the technology—they just expect accurate, timely information that meets them where they are. Yet many jurisdictions still rely on one-way, one-size-fits-all broadcast alerting, leaving gaps in accessibility, trust and engagement. To meet contemporary expectations—and foster the public’s agency in response, recovery and resilience—technology must sit at the heart of modern emergency and disaster management.
This session shares practical lessons from Genvis’ work in two jurisdictions: NextGen Emergency WA (EWA) in Western Australia and MB Ready in Manitoba, Canada. Amid a provincial state of emergency during Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record—with almost 20,000 evacuees—Manitoba EMO and Genvis configured and launched MB Ready in 36 hours. The Cudo-powered portal provides a single authoritative source for live warnings, maps, closures and evacuation support, reaching rural, remote and First Nations communities, and now integrates critical data sources such as 511 road conditions and Environment Canada feeds. Manitoba subsequently recognised Genvis with one of the province’s highest civilian honours, the Order of the Buffalo Hunt.
In WA, EWA demonstrates how consumer-grade user experience, government-grade security and population-scale performance can coexist to deliver trusted, high-velocity public information across agencies. Powered by Genvis’ Cudo platform, EWA was recognised nationally as Best State Government Project at the 2025 iTnews Benchmark Awards. The foundations Genvis has built into Cudo—multi-agency workflows, accessibility-first design, and repeatable, configuration-as-code delivery—underpinned Manitoba’s rapid deployment and continue to guide its evolution.
Attendees will take away practical, portable strategies to accelerate digital readiness; make critical decisions at speed; align public–private teams; design for whole-community access; and implement human-in-the-loop safeguards alongside outcome-oriented measures to build enduring public trust.
The result is a concrete path to modernise public information now: deploy citizen-centred, high-reliability solutions quickly—even in crises—while strengthening public trust for the long term.
This session shares practical lessons from Genvis’ work in two jurisdictions: NextGen Emergency WA (EWA) in Western Australia and MB Ready in Manitoba, Canada. Amid a provincial state of emergency during Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record—with almost 20,000 evacuees—Manitoba EMO and Genvis configured and launched MB Ready in 36 hours. The Cudo-powered portal provides a single authoritative source for live warnings, maps, closures and evacuation support, reaching rural, remote and First Nations communities, and now integrates critical data sources such as 511 road conditions and Environment Canada feeds. Manitoba subsequently recognised Genvis with one of the province’s highest civilian honours, the Order of the Buffalo Hunt.
In WA, EWA demonstrates how consumer-grade user experience, government-grade security and population-scale performance can coexist to deliver trusted, high-velocity public information across agencies. Powered by Genvis’ Cudo platform, EWA was recognised nationally as Best State Government Project at the 2025 iTnews Benchmark Awards. The foundations Genvis has built into Cudo—multi-agency workflows, accessibility-first design, and repeatable, configuration-as-code delivery—underpinned Manitoba’s rapid deployment and continue to guide its evolution.
Attendees will take away practical, portable strategies to accelerate digital readiness; make critical decisions at speed; align public–private teams; design for whole-community access; and implement human-in-the-loop safeguards alongside outcome-oriented measures to build enduring public trust.
The result is a concrete path to modernise public information now: deploy citizen-centred, high-reliability solutions quickly—even in crises—while strengthening public trust for the long term.
Biography
Kirstin Butcher is the Founder, CEO, and Co-Head of Product at Genvis, leading the company’s mission to modernise public safety and emergency management technologies. A serial entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience, Kirstin has successfully delivered critical technology infrastructure for emergency response, policing, and public safety, including NextGen Emergency WA (EWA), MB Ready, SafeWA, and the G2G Suite. She specialises in navigating government complexity to drive innovation at scale, ensuring that emergency management technologies deliver government-grade security with citizen-centred design. A WA Finalist for Australian of the Year (2022), Kirstin is a recognised leader in public value digital innovation.
Kirstin Butcher
CEO
Genvis
Technology at the Heart: From Emergency WA to Manitoba’s MB Ready in 36 Hours
Biography
