Alina: Ilario, when we met at LEARNTEC in Karlsruhe, you told us about the great success you have had implementing ILIAS as a learning management system for Volt Europa. I thought this was so interesting and I wanted to find out more, which is why I am delighted to be interviewing you today.
First of all: Could you tell us a bit more about the Volt Academy?

Ilario: The Volt Academy is Volt Europa's central training space. The platform has been online and officially open to members since the beginning of this year (2026). Its primary goal is to gather all of the movement's organisational, political, and management knowledge in a single, secure location, ensuring a single source of verified information for the various national chapters.

The main topics covered in the courses include European institutions (European Council, Commission, Parliament,...), their composition and functioning, as well as the practical skills needed for activism and managing local teams.

Each national chapter has its own local academy. National chapters are the country-specific branches of the pan-European movement, legally registered as independent political parties in their respective nations (e.g., Volt Italia, Volt Deutschland).

Some of the local academies within the ILIAS installation are more structured, others are just starting out – but they all share the same infrastructure for their training courses.
Just like our partner “VoltThere”. A key decision that allows both groups and authors to optimise resources and to share materials. They all use the same ILIAS installation.

VoltThere is a European political foundation affiliated with the pan-European movement and party Volt Europa. For them, we also developed a custom graphic design and user experience (UI/UX) to facilitate the platform's daily use.

This concept of one single source of information sounds very impressive. How do you intend to ensure that as many authors as possible create their own learning content, and that this content is of an appropriate standard?

To ensure people create their own content while maintaining a high standard of quality, we apply specific work processes, with team leaders and local academies acting as content validators, who also make sure that the content aligns with the required tone of voice and with Volt’s value generally. We have begun developing ready-made graphic templates and specific training courses on the use of ILIAS's internal creation tools and the H5P component for interactive modules.

Quality is monitored through an internal verification and review protocol managed by the various coordination groups. An idea is analysed, transformed into clear actions, executed, verified from an educational and technical perspective, and finally registered in the common knowledge base for final publication. This method establishes clear boundaries to safeguard scientific quality and avoid misalignments between countries.

How has your professional experience shaped the operational approach of the Volt Academy?

Managing an organisation serving thousands of people across Europe requires methodological rigour that can't be left to improvisation, even when coordinated by volunteers. In my daily work at OC Group, we design tailored architectures following strict process logic and protocols, in line with our ISO9001 certification. I applied exactly the same mindset to Volt: we replaced the initial fragmentation with a clear and defined structure, protecting Volt's information assets and establishing clear organisational boundaries for our people.

Our community of course loves ILIAS. But what made Volt Europa choose ILIAS? Was it difficult or a long process to make this decision?

I proposed using ILIAS during a project presentation in Amsterdam in September 2025. The decision came quickly because Volt is a pan-European movement that places open source and European digital sovereignty at the heart of its decisions. We didn't want to depend on large external technology companies or closed proprietary systems with per-user licensing fees. It just took some months to find the budget for the hosting management.

ILIAS offers complete control over data and permissions, a point I also explained during my presentation at LEARNTEC 2026 in Karlsruhe and in my speech with Sabrina Riso (Instructional Designer and Volter) at the Volt General Assembly in Bratislava some weeks ago: see full speech here. We consider data protection a pillar of social and European development, and ILIAS perfectly meets these values.

How was the process of introducing ILIAS? How many users benefit from the platform so far?

As I mentioned, the platform has been online and open to members since the beginning of this year. We currently have around 140 active users, but we expect to reach a few thousand people (our Volters) as soon as the new training courses are ready.

From a technical architecture perspective, the system is installed directly on the Volt Tech Team's servers, a choice designed to ensure European digital sovereignty and complete control of sensitive data. Our planning includes the use of H5P interactive modules, which has already been implemented, and the integration of BigBlueButton for real-time connected classrooms. The main hurdle during activation involved the communication with the central identity management system, which posed a complex authentication issue.

What exactly did this hurdle look like?

I'm referring to a real technical obstacle that we're addressing together with the Volt Europa Tech Team and Cyber security team. The issue concerns the integration between our platform and Volt Auth, the central identity provider that allows members to use a single sign-on for all of Volt’s services.

Volt's security team requires modern cryptographic standards, specifically the use of ECDSA algorithms (such as ES256, ES384, or ES512). Currently, the native ILIAS component for managing OpenID Connect relies on an external PHP library (jumbojett/OpenID-Connect-PHP) that does not support this type of advanced encryption. For this reason, we cannot connect Volt Auth to the ILIAS installation.

This limitation has a direct operational impact on access management and the scalability of the Academy project. Automatic member onboarding cannot work, and we are forced to add accounts through manual invitations. Furthermore, for obvious data protection and GDPR compliance reasons, the Tech Team cannot share lists of personal data outside of the central secure flow. Therefore, we have to retrieve people's information through alternative, secure channels.

The code solution has already been identified: the ILIAS community has an official modification proposal (pull request number 10576) to replace the current OAuth library with an updated one compatible with the ECDSA standard. However, dedicated funding is needed to complete the integration.

This case demonstrates that digital sovereignty and system security are not theoretical concepts, but require a concrete commitment to shared development.

I will be giving a talk on this topic at the next ILIAS Conference in Hamburg, on September 9 and 10, 2026, titled "Digital Sovereignty in Action". This interview is a direct invitation to decision makers, administrators, and technical coordinators: Come and listen to my presentation and let's discuss the issue in Hamburg. By pooling resources, we can fund this development and solve a roadblock affecting many organisations in Europe.

Thank you for the invitation. We’re looking forward to listening to your talk in Hamburg. You’ve pointed out how important an issue security is. What do data protection and digital sovereignty mean for you as an ILIAS Service Provider?

For us at OC Group, the motto "Knowledge is Value" and the defence of European digital sovereignty are not declarations of intent, but rather commitments on the ground. When we analyse security practices for the integration of complex systems, we treat data protection not as a simple GDPR compliance measure, but as a system integrity protocol that must be constantly enhanced.

Open Source thrives on this balance: Volt uses an autonomous infrastructure on its own servers, but benefits from the experience of those who design secure systems for public administration and industry.

Managing security boundaries directly and transparently allows us to support the community in developing necessary changes (such as the pull request to overcome the ECDSA protocol limit). It also allows us to transform technical knowledge into a competitive and secure advantage for all organisations choosing technological autonomy in Europe.

Another topic: I’ve heard that Volt Europa’s IT team has recently made a significant technical contribution to the open source community. Can you tell us about that?

Yes, and we are incredibly proud of it. One of our Tech Team's developers, Joost, took an unmaintained ("dead") public Helm chart for ILIAS, updated it, and optimised it. This is essentially an automated blueprint that allows organisations to deploy ILIAS using modern "container" technology (Kubernetes).

We have now open-sourced this updated configuration to the world. It means any other European organisation, NGO, or public sector entity can now deploy ILIAS in a highly secure, modern, and scalable way. For us, open source isn't just about using free software; it’s about active collaboration, sharing knowledge, and building shared European digital sovereignty.

That sounds very interesting! So what are the plans for the future of Volt Academy?

We want to extend the platform's use to the entire volunteer base in Europe, overcoming the current fragmentation and reaching thousands of members. We will complete the modules dedicated to the functioning of European institutions and, hopefully next year, we will integrate artificial intelligence systems to support teacher authoring, while maintaining human supervision as a safety protocol. We want the Volt Academy to become a key factor in the growth of the movement's skills, in line with our political commitment to the community.

I look forward to seeing you in Hamburg in early September to showing you how we are translating these objectives into concrete results.

Thank you Ilario for the interesting insights into Volt Europa's usage of ILIAS. We’re looking forward to listening to your presentation at this years ILIAS Conference and hope to hear many more success stories regarding ILIAS in the future!

And for all of the readers who haven’t checked out the Conference’s programme yet: you can find more information about Ilario’s talk as well as all of the others on our website.