Top cop to join G2G tech firm

Outgoing WA Police deputy commissioner and former vaccine commander Gary Dreibergs will join the private sector as a senior executive in technology firm genvis, the company behind the state’s G2G self-quarantine app.

Mr Dreibergs will head strategic partnerships for genvis as the West Leederville-based business gears up to sell its successful public safety platform to authorities in other jurisdictions, including overseas.

The visual AI company, founded in 2017 by former 40under40 winner Kirstin Butcher, is establishing a presence in Canada where it believes the similarities between the Australian governance, justice and law enforcement structures provide opportunities to grow its market.

It believes the platform used to run the G2G suite of products is capable of being used as the backbone of many other public safety applications.

Mr Dreibergs established Operation Tide to lead the operational roles of WA Police during the pandemic and worked closely with genvis to create the technology required to automate home quarantine. He became vaccine commander in January.

He was considered as a possible contender for the role of WA Police commissioner following the appointment of outgoing commissioner Chris Dawson, who will replace Kim Beazley as the state’s governor.

However, Mr Dreibergs took himself out of contention and his resignation, ending a 40-year career, was made public on May 6 when Premier Mark McGowan described Mr Dreibergs as an innovative police officer whose role during the pandemic was “pivotal”.

“I had the choice of applying for the commissioner’s position or joining genvis,” Mr Dreibergs said.

“I had to make a decision one way or the other.

“I have a good relationship with the state government.

“I wanted to be clear and honest with them and that’s why I made a decision before the process started.”

He said he had been impressed by the speed and dexterity that a small business like genvis had when it came to developing the G2G suite of applications, and believed there were benefits in working with innovative suppliers for authorities such as police forces, which normally procure from big, established organisations.

With a rapid response to the pandemic required in the early months of 2020, Mr Dreibergs commissioned genvis on the back of experience dealing with the firm when it developed a family and domestic violence management app.

“The original G2G (app) was basically built in 10 days,” he said.

“Obviously there were thousands of iterations later.”

The genvis-built G2G Pass border management solution was used to manage all travel into WA, and the G2G Now app allowed more than 150,000 people quarantine at home from September 2020.

The use of facial recognition to confirm the identity of people in quarantine and location services to verify their location meant that home-quarantine, which was preferred to hotels, could be managed efficiently, relieving police of the role of making random checks.

When the G2G app was first created genvis had 10 staff, half of which were software engineers.

It now has about 30 staff, with many located outside Perth.