From zero to nationwide: MLPS delivers a learning platform in 30 Days

MLPS (Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali) is the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, responsible for developing and implementing labour market and social welfare policies. MLPS supports unemployed individuals in Italy through programmes and services aimed at improving employment opportunities and social inclusion.

The Challenge

MLPS needed to deliver a mandatory learning journey to every unemployed person in Italy, creating an engaging and easy-to-navigate experience for an audience with widely varying levels of digital literacy and backgrounds. The learning journey had to be simple, accessible and intuitive to ensure every learner could successfully complete the required training.

The scale of the programme presented another significant challenge. With approximately 2.2 million registered users, the platform’s 25 learning modules have collectively been completed more than 3 million times. On peak days, up to 25,000 users logged in, with as many as 5,000 concurrent users accessing the platform simultaneously. Supporting this level of demand required infrastructure far beyond a standard Totara deployment.

MLPS also required a sophisticated authentication framework capable of supporting more than 10 Single Sign-On (SSO) methods, including the first-ever Totara integration with SPID (Public Digital Identity System) and CIE (Electronic Identity Card). Delivering secure, seamless authentication across multiple identity providers added significant technical complexity.

The Solution

Totara was selected as the learning platform for its flexibility, scalability, and user-friendly interface. For MLPS, a single, streamlined learning journey was developed, focusing on simplicity to accommodate the broad audience. The journey was designed to be intuitive, ensuring that users with varying backgrounds and digital skills could easily follow and complete the required training.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the project was the extremely rapid deployment timeline. Despite the technical and functional complexity: large‑scale authentication, nationwide reach, high‑volume reporting, and a demanding performance profile, the entire platform was delivered in just one month. This accelerated delivery required tight coordination across teams and a highly efficient implementation approach.

To address the scalability challenge, Deloitte’s DevOps team implemented a scalable server architecture comprising one cluster with multiple servers and nodes. This elastic scaling allowed capacity and throughput to grow with user demand, helping maintain low latency and overall platform stability and performance.

Further enhancing the solution, MLPS integrated Totara with SIU (Sistema Informativo Federativo Unitario), Italy’s centralised reporting system, enabling seamless data exchange and comprehensive monitoring of learner progress.

A key technical milestone was the successful first-time integration of Totara with SPID (Public Digital Identity System) and CIE (Electronic Identity Card). This integration introduced advanced secure authentication methods, significantly enhancing user security and convenience while addressing the complexities of managing a large and diverse user base.

The learning journey itself was structured as a single programme with extensive courses comprising multiple SCORM modules, utilising the pathway format to guide learners through the content effectively.

The Results

MLPS successfully launched a nationwide learning platform for unemployed people across Italy in just 30 days, despite the project’s exceptional scale and complexity. Delivering this level of performance, stability and integration within such a compressed timeframe represents one of the project’s greatest achievements.

Key outcomes included:

• Successfully supporting more than 2.2 million registered users through a highly scalable infrastructure with no significant downtime or performance issues.
• More than 3 million completions across 25 learning modules, demonstrating exceptional learner engagement.
• Reliably supporting up to 25,000 daily users and 5,000 concurrent users through dynamic server scaling.
• Delivering an intuitive learning experience that received positive feedback from learners with diverse backgrounds and digital skill levels.
• Providing MLPS with real-time reporting and compliance monitoring through integration with SIU.
• Successfully implementing the first Totara integration with SPID and CIE, alongside support for more than 10 SSO methods.
• Delivering the project on time and within budget, demonstrating Totara’s ability to support large-scale public sector learning initiatives.
• Showcasing how Totara can deliver secure, scalable learning experiences for millions of users while meeting demanding technical, performance and user experience requirements.

This implementation demonstrates how MLPS successfully transformed mandatory learning into a secure, scalable nationwide digital service, reaching millions of learners while delivering one of the fastest large-scale Totara implementations to date.