The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion on the operations of the Office of Information Technology of the General Services Administration of Puerto Rico (ASG). A qualified opinion is issued when the noncompliances, individually or together, are significant but not pervasive.
The Report reveals that the General Services Administration invested $3,428,000 in a purchasing system that, after five years, had not been implemented. The chief information officer certified that the five-module Purchasing System, contracted in 2016, was turned off and installed on a test server located in the cloud. The licenses for the use of the system were also in the cloud and unused.
This situation was due to the concerns of the Department of the Treasury regarding the security of the connection of ASG's purchasing system with the PRIFAS financial system, and that ASG's purchasing system did not integrate buyers from other agencies that made their purchases independently. The Report recommends that, in planning future projects, operational integration with the Government, ASG's technological needs, and the availability of funds be taken into account.
The two-finding audit notes that, contrary to Regulation 23, For the Conservation of Documents of a Fiscal Nature or Necessary for the Examination and Verification of Accounts and Fiscal Operations of 1988, ASG did not present to the auditors of the Office of the Comptroller 25 of the 27 invoices requested for examination. These invoices for the implementation of the purchasing system and licensing services totaled $6,090,812. This situation reflects that ASG did not maintain adequate control of the documentation of the transactions, and it is recommended to appoint a document administrator who complies with the applicable regulations.
The Report comments that the document of the agreement to cancel a debt of $6,480,457 that ASG maintained with the company that had provided implementation and licensing services for the aforementioned purchasing system was not presented for the Comptroller's examination. The Secretary of the Treasury and the legal advisor of the Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority certified that they did not have the cancellation agreement in their files. The auxiliary administrator of ASG in 2020 does not know the reason why the cancellation agreement does not appear in its files. This situation deprives the Government of the documentation necessary to maintain the transparency of these processes and justify the related transactions. The report covers the period from June 28, 2016, to October 4, 2021.
See Audit Report TI-23-01.
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