Is digital transformation ever finished?

There is a moment in many organisations when digital transformation is treated as a destination. A strategy is written, tools are selected, staff are trained, and a quiet expectation settles in: once this is done, we can move on. The work will be complete. The organisation will be “digitally mature”.

We understand the desire for this moment. Youth organisations operate under constant pressure to deliver, report and adapt. Having something finished — especially something as complex as digital transformation — promises relief. But our experience suggests something else: digital transformation does not end, because the conditions it responds to never stabilise.

Digital tools change. Platforms rise and fall. Policies shift. But more importantly, people change. Teams grow and shrink. Young people arrive with new habits, expectations and sensitivities. Contexts evolve. What felt inclusive a year ago may suddenly feel exclusionary. What once enabled participation may begin to exhaust it.

In this sense, digital transformation is less a project and more a practice.

At Magnet and IJGD, we began to realise that the most important shifts were not technical, but relational. They had to do with how decisions were revisited, how feedback was taken seriously, how discomfort was handled when things no longer worked. These moments rarely appear in reports. They are quiet, often inconvenient, and sometimes unsettling.

A finished digital strategy would suggest that these questions can be resolved once and for all. But youth work does not function that way. It is inherently relational, situated and responsive. Digital practices, when they are taken seriously, must share these qualities.

This does not mean living in constant instability. Structures matter. Shared tools matter. Clear agreements matter. But they matter as supports for reflection, not replacements for it. When strategies become fixed, they risk protecting habits rather than values. When systems stop being questioned, they quietly stop serving the people they were designed for.

One of the most difficult things to accept is that digital maturity is not measured by confidence or speed. It is measured by the ability to notice when something no longer aligns — and to respond without panic. That response might mean changing a tool. Or it might mean changing a rhythm, a role, or a decision-making process.

At Magnet and IJGD, we have learned to treat moments of friction not as failure, but as signals. Signals that participation has shifted. That care needs to be rethought. That the digital environment is shaping behaviour in unexpected ways. These moments slow us down, but they also keep the organisation alive.

Digital transformation, in this sense, is never finished because it is not about arrival. It is about attentiveness. About staying in conversation with the realities of the people we work with, rather than locking ourselves into systems that once made sense.

Perhaps the most honest measure of digital transformation is not how advanced an organisation appears, but how willing it is to revise itself. To admit uncertainty. To remain open to learning even after the project ends, the funding cycle closes, and the strategy document is approved.

In a sector that is constantly asked to innovate, choosing to remain unfinished may be the most responsible position of all.

Output of the project “Digital Navigator”, 2024-2025, co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.