About the project
SKILLS is a cross-border project of the Interreg IPA South Adriatic 2021–2027 programme that strengthens the competencies, digital capacity and market integration of Blue Economy stakeholders in Puglia and Molise (Italy), Albania and Montenegro. The total project budget is €4,799,509.92, of which the European Union funds €3,991,460.95. The digital platform is the project’s central digital output.
The platform is presented to users under the Adriatic Blue Growth Cluster (ABGC) brand and consists of four modules bound by shared sign-in (central LDAP, SSO and JWT): the Communication Module as the networking hub and platform gateway, the Information Module – a DMS with OCR, full-text search, version history and OnlyOffice editing, the Education Module – an LMS for the ILM and HELM programmes with quizzes, gradebook, forum and video conferencing, and the E-commerce Module – a multi-vendor marketplace for Blue Economy products and services. The interface is available in English, Italian, Albanian and Montenegrin.
B-ONE was selected in a transparent procedure under PRAG rules on the basis of the best price-quality ratio and works in an Agile (SCRUM) methodology through 11 coordination meetings with the contracting authority. The delay of the university server infrastructure was bridged by developing in a local environment, so all modules were migrated to university servers in December 2025 without rework. The platform entered its Beta phase in March 2026 and was officially promoted on 29 April 2026 at the Institute of Marine Biology in Kotor.
Technologies: React.js, Node.js with Express.js, MongoDB, central LDAP with SSO, Nginx and PM2 on Linux virtual machines, HTTPS/SSL and GDPR-aligned operation. All work was done in-house, without subcontractors. Maintenance and support are secured until October 2027, after which the Cluster takes over the platform.
What B-ONE delivered
- Communication Module: profiles, connections, chat, news and events, SSO gateway
- Information Module (DMS): document hierarchy, OCR, full-text search, versions, OnlyOffice
- Education Module (LMS): courses and lectures, quizzes and gradebook, forum, chat, video conferencing
- E-commerce Module: stores, catalogue, cart, orders, invoicing and reporting
- Deployment on University of Montenegro infrastructure, central LDAP/SSO, security and four languages
- User guides, administrator and end-user training, maintenance until October 2027