The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issues an adverse opinion on the awarding and administration of a contract related to technology services of the Puerto Rico Cooperative Development Commission.
The Report reveals that on January 27, 2014, the Commission awarded a $400,000 contract to perform information technology work without a needs and feasibility study. Nor did the Commission prepare a written request for proposals or solicit proposals from other companies. These situations are contrary to the best practices for the acquisition and development of computerized information systems. In addition, it prevented free competition among potential suppliers in order to obtain better prices.
The two-finding audit points out that the contracted company had submitted a first proposal in April 2013 for $262,400, which contained the same services –except for the development of the portal for the Second Biennial Conference– as the second proposal of July 2013 for $400,000, with no documents to justify the increase. In addition, the Administration module that would have integrated the registry of schools and youth cooperatives of the Commission with the Department of State, the Industrial Development Company and the Department of Education was not developed. Nevertheless, the Commission paid $94,800 for those interconnection services that were not achieved.
Our auditors detected multiple deficiencies related to the contracting, the pre-intervention of payments, and the acceptance process of the contracted technology services. For example, the contract did not contain a clause establishing that the developed modules are intellectual property of the Government of Puerto Rico, nor did it include the service warranty period, nor the obligation to deliver the source code of the modules. In addition, invoices and payment vouchers were processed without the required signatures and the Commission did not provide evidence of the tests performed on the modules, nor of the acceptance and approval of the users thereof. In fact, the users indicated that the information they recorded in the module was being erased.
The Report covers the period from May 21 to November 13, 2015.
See Audit Report TI-18-01
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
Some documents on this page are saved in PDF format.
To view these documents, you must have the following free program installed.
