According to the Auditor General's Office (AGN, for its acronym in Spanish), in 2008 the former Military Geographic Institute, responsible for obtaining, maintaining, and disseminating geospatial data throughout the mainland, "held a significant amount of direct contracting," but "could be circumvented in some cases (by) procedures for private or public bidding. "

In that year, the current National Geographic Institute made "70% of purchases of goods and services through direct contracting." This changed in 2009 when, instead of the preponderance of direct contracting, "the private tender predominated, of 70 contracts, 80% were of this type, 12.86% of direct contracting, and only 7.14% was done by public tenders.”

In fact, it was found that "the files related to procurement processes," did not have the intervention of the table entries "or of the equivalent industry that assigns the cover with the corresponding identification" and organizes them in the records. "The Legal Sector of the agency did not intervene, nor was there sufficient supporting documentation attached," stated the audit.

The report, approved this year on data from 2008 to March 2009, added that "contracts were awarded to dealers that submitted expired fiscal certifications” and that "there was no evidence of the process of transmission and publication of the recruitment proceedings, as is required by regulations.”

Moreover, the AGN said the documents exposed on levels of physical implementation "did not allow assessments of the management of the body", as unrelated to the respective financial budget execution. The watchdog explained that "management indicators that would allow monitoring of the different levels of execution and identifying deviations between real times and those scheduled were not developed."

It should be noted that at the time the audit was performed, the agency was in the process of administrative reorganization: "This measure included changes in those responsible for each sector, disaggregation or creation of other units even without formal approval," says Audit.
 
The 3 Million DNI

The AGN verified the agreements of cooperation between the Institute of Geography and 57 government agencies, including the National Registry of Persons (RENAPER) for making the DNI (Identification Card)." In 2009 five direct contracts totaling $ 15,870,000 for 3,000,000 DNIs were arranged." The report says that the "collection of documents was difficult" because for the verification of the level of implementation of these Conventions "there were no records produced that showed the verification of each level of implementation.”