The Court of Accounts has asked the National Institute of Social Security for greater precision in the criteria for awarding its contracts, since the body considers that “excessively generic” formulas are used. The body has audited the contracts for works, services and supplies entered into by Social Security in the 2021 financial year and this lack of detail when awarding the contracts has been revealed in its report, which has been accessed by Europa Press.
Specifically, of the 393 contracts formalized by the National Social Security Institute in 2021, a total of 66 have been audited, representing 70% of the award amount, with almost 24.5 million euros. Due to their volume and economic relevance, the Court says, the surveillance and security, cleaning and building maintenance contracts stand out.
All the specifications have included some type of objective criteria for awarding or special execution conditions of a social and/or environmental nature. The Court of Auditors points out that the inclusion of this type of consideration constitutes a good management practice, although in 49 files its link with the objective of the contracts has not been reflected in order to achieve the efficiency of their fulfillment.
Contract delays
On the other hand, the agency has indicated that in two cases delays of 5.5 months and 10 months have been detected, which have delayed the completion of the works with respect to the expected execution periods. In one case, the Institute applied economic penalties to the winning company for an import of 14,708.40 euros for failure to comply with the established deadline. With all this, the Court has also recommended better specifying the special conditions of execution and not dividing the object of the contract into lots. Of course, despite the warnings, the body considers that, in general terms, Social Security was adjusted, in general, to legality.
After these warnings, the Court recommends that the Social Security Institute “duly” justify in the contracting files the reasons that support the decision not to divide the object of the contracts into lots. In this context, it urges to motivate “in a concrete way” in the files the justification of the award criteria used, as well as the accentuated weighting of each one of them.
Finally, the supervisory body considers that Social Security has to promote measures to improve the design and justification of the objective award criteria. Also of the special execution conditions, incorporating the application of specific social, labor or environmental, relating them to the purpose of the contracts and providing sufficient monitoring indicators that approve adequately verify the effectiveness of its compliance.
