Trevor Vaugh

Ireland's Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation

Trevor Vaugh is Transformation Policy Design Lead at Ireland’s Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, leading the work to embed design across government. He chaired the group that created Ireland’s first Government Design Principles – adopted as national policy in 2022 – and subsequently led the development and delivery of the Action Plan for Designing Better Public Services and the Design for Public Value Guidelines, adopted as government policy in 2026, together establishing design as a permanent feature of how Ireland develops and delivers public services.

Before joining DPER, Trevor was a tenured academic in Strategic Design at Maynooth University, teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level, publishing widely, and establishing Mi:Lab – an award-winning innovation lab for higher education transformation. Earlier in his career he developed innovative medical devices and holds more than 50 patents in healthcare innovation.
He co-authored ARRIVE (Routledge, 2021) and is an active contributor to broadcast media – bringing human-centred design approaches to wider public audiences and championing design as a bridge between people, technology, and change.

He sits on a number of steering groups and advisory boards and has helped shape design policy with organisations including the OECD, World Bank, and European Commission.