‘Digital’ is an increasingly problematic word, ‘digital transformation’ a doubly problematic phrase – in both cases because they are used as much to obscure as to illuminate. One of the difficulties is that ‘digital’ is slapped on as a random qualifier of all sorts of things, to the point where it doesn’t (and probably shouldn’t) add much meaning at all. Arguably the underlying problem comes from the fact that ‘digital’ started by being a word which said something about technology, and has become a word which says something about it’s not quite clear what.
Mike Bracken has neatly sidestepped all that with a definition which might actually be useful:
digital transformation is the act of radically changing how your organisation works, so that it can survive and thrive in the internet era
As the post goes on to note, transformation may deliver some technology change; technology change does not deliver transformation. But confusion on that point is understandable, because it is often the case that transformation becomes visible externally precisely as a technology based changed – and there is some faint irony in the fact that GDS and its first flagship product, gov.uk provide an example of how that confusion can be created.