And that second system, Ms. Barrados, is the one costing us a billion dollars, because it is a parallel system. It is a system of agencies, where you have government managers, for all sorts of reasons mentioned in your report, turning to those agencies whose name has come up repeatedly.
Have you met with these agencies? It says here that there are 176 suppliers, but the big winners are the agencies that were awarded $133 million in contracts over 5 fiscal years. Another agency received $72.5 million, and another, $43.8 million. That is a huge amount of money! Especially when you consider that the government has staffing mechanisms that you put in place, in addition to a Web site where anyone can apply.
According to your report, this means that people who come from agencies are bypassing the Public Service Employment Act system, so we have no security mechanisms covering them. What's more, these people are taking the places of others, because they are able to gain seniority and experience. Yet they do not go through the mechanism in place to get a job, and during their 90 days of employment, they very often make friends with people who give them full-time jobs.
Ms. Barrados, this is quite a situation. Have you looked into who these three agencies are? Are they agencies with close ties to the government?