The organization makes recommendations to the Director of COR3 so that the transparency portal meets the criteria of Transparency International and follows best practices, in order to expedite the disbursement of federal funds.
February 14, 2019, San Juan, Puerto Rico —– On June 7, 2018, the Government of Puerto Rico through the Central Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3) awarded a contract to CGI Technologies (CGI). CGI is a Canadian company, with offices in the US, which obtained a contract for 88 million dollars ($ 88,455,882) to, among other tasks, create a transparency portal that would allow the government and the larger public to learn about and track the recovery process of Puerto Rico.
Transparency has gained prominence in discussions about Puerto Rico at the federal level, especially in the weeks immediately following the hurricane, as a result of the scandal surrounding the Whitefish contract (the Montana company with limited experience that was hired to repair the electric power distribution system). The issue was not resolved with the cancellation of the Whitefish contract, and Puerto Rico was required to take special measures to address mistrust over the proper management of public funds, as stipulated in the Bipartisan Budget Act passed on February 9, 2018. Recently, transparency has also been used to “excuse” or “justify” the slow disbursement of aid by federal authorities to Puerto Rico, as reported in the media.
“To be able to track the recovery process in Puerto Rico after María and ensure a transparent, clean and fair recovery— in addition to knowing how is Puerto Rico’s recovering after María, what investment is required, and from what sources will these funds come— the civil sector needs updated information that allows us to follow the progress of the recovery to actively participate and monitor effectively,” said Cecille Blondet, Executive Director of Espacios Abiertos, addressing whether the transparency portal created for these purposes complies with internationally recognized best practices.
Last September, on the anniversary of the passage of the hurricane, the government’s transparency portal was unveiled through an island-wide campaign, titled “Construimos”. Considering that the transparency portal, commissioned to CGI Technologies, is one of the tools that the government identified in the Transformation and Innovation Plan that it presented to Congress in August 2018 to prioritize fiscal transparency, monitor the progress of investments and help prevent waste, Espacios Abiertos has been monitoring and evaluating the digital platform construimos.pr. In its evaluation of the portal, Espacios Abiertos used the criteria set forth by Transparency International to avoid corruption in post-disaster recovery processes and also evaluated examples of portals created for the same purposes in different US jurisdictions affected by natural disasters between 2005 and 2018 (Texas, Louisiana, New Jersey, North Carolina, among others), some of which have also been designed by CGI Technologies.
These criteria and best practices can be organized into 6 principles:
- Publication of a transparency policy
- Accessible and easily understandable information
- Transparency in hiring processes
- Timely publication of program and project details
- National monitoring and tracking system
- Fraud reporting system
These, in turn, are subdivided into 15 categories as detailed in Appendix 1.
After evaluating the government’s transparency portal using these categories, Espacios Abiertos concluded (see Appendix 1) that the platform prepared by CGI Technologies does not fully comply with more than half of the 15 best practices. Specifically, Espacios Abiertos draws attention to: the need to provide details for subdivisions within municipalities, the need to include a detailed breakdown of projects, as well as contracts, and the publication of historical data that allow a comparative analysis of progress, by area and project. To demonstrate the usefulness of these data, EA’s Public Policy analyst, Daniel Santamaría, presented some tables (see Appendix 2 of press release) with information from the COR3 transparency portal compiled by EA for October 2018 and February 2019 that demonstrate the progress or lack thereof of disbursements to municipalities.
“Exactly one year ago, appropriations were approved in Congress for the recovery, but few funds have been disbursed and still thousands in Puerto Rico continue to live under blue tarps. This situation is not acceptable. The delay in the disbursement of federal funds negatively impacts the quality of life of our citizens and has a detrimental effect on our already battered economy. Under the pretext of transparency Puerto Rico has had to deal with numerous obstacles. This exercise is part of the racist practice used by the United States government against Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico’s economy should not be strangled by remote control from the federal capital. We already know the impact, in terms of lives lost, of the slow attention of the federal government in the days and weeks after the passing of the hurricane. In order to move beyond this course of action and break down some of the obstacles, we are presenting specific recommendations that should be addressed quickly to comply and expedite the disbursement of recovery funds,” Blondet said at the same time that she indicated that EA is currently sending a letter with its evaluation and recommendations to the Executive Director of COR3.