Reimagining Government Services: How Designing for Trust, Dignity, and Human Emotion can deliver a high ROI

This session explores how government services can be redesigned around client centricity, with a focus on empathy, emotional experience, and friction‑free service delivery. Responding to the real human needs is critical to reducing unnecessary client interactions and reducing operational costs.

Ryan Hum is the Chief Client Experience Officer (CCXO) and Associate ADM at Employment and Social Development Canada, and the first ever CCXO in the Government of Canada.  

Over the past ten years, Ryan has developed a track record of successful "first ever" type jobs: Chief Designer and Chief Data Scientist at the Government of Canada’s Central Innovation Lab, VP of Data and CIO at the Canadian Energy Regulator, and now CCXO, each time demonstrating the power of human-centered design, behavioural science, and data science to policy and program delivery.   

He was named the Canadian Public Sector CIO of the Year (2023) and Technation's Public Sector Disruptor of the Year (2022). He is also a recipient of the Public Service Award of Excellence.  

Diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation are important to him and are reflected in how he works professionally and in his personal life as a partner, and father of two.