Puerto Rico’s ERP Becomes a Reality, or at Least Some of it

By María Soledad Dávila Calero

After years of failures to launch, representatives from the budget and technology sectors of the Puerto Rico central government celebrated the successful launch of the first phase of Puerto Rico’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System, named IntegraPR.

Government officials also recognized that there had been some growing pains with the system’s implementation.

The initial phase, which serves 63 agencies, focuses on the processes for managing government suppliers. The consolidated budget for Puerto Rico’s central government for fiscal year 2026-2027 is $33.6 billion.

Implementing the second phase, which will include the agencies’ internal payroll systems, is expected to be launched early next year.  

Treasury Secretary Ángel Pantoja Rodríguez, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Orlando Rivera Berríos, and Puerto Rico Innovation and Technology Service (PRITS) Director Poincaré Díaz Peña held a round table with members of the press and gave them an update on the initiative.

An ERP system is a collection of software, platforms and protocols that are used to centralize the central government’s accounting, financial and procurement systems. Since 2018, the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) has argued for the need to implement an ERP as one of the measures required to improve the Island’s government fiscal discipline.

FOMB Executive Director Robert Mujica explained after the Board’s 51st public meeting that an ERP will not only help with managing the government’s finances, but also with the transparency and quick access to financial data that is needed to produce audited financial statements in a more timely manner.  

It’s no secret that it’s been a bumpy road to implement the ERP, as previous government administrations have unsuccessfully attempted twice to launch the initiative. With this third attempt, the financial tally for the ERP system’s cost is $117 million.

Progress so Far

The first step of IntegraPR’s official launch was on July 1, 2026. The OMB director argued that the main benefits of the system are that agencies will be able to validate their available funds and their banking information will be consolidated, and thus, more agile. Rivera Berríos explained that before the ERP, government transactions were registered manually and the log for this was updated on a monthly basis.

“The government of Puerto Rico was using systems dating back to the 1990s, and throughout that time, certain agencies implemented various financial systems, which fragmented the government’s budgetary and financial information,” the OMB director said.

Likewise, for vendors, the process of signing their contracts will now be done online, with billing information attached to the contracts.

The Treasury secretary boasted that through IntegraPR, the government had already disbursed $600 million and processed over 8,000 invoices. When asked about complaints from suppliers that have not been paid, Pantoja Rodríguez recognized that there have been some problems in the implementation process.

He explained that even if the payment system is now centralized, Treasury cannot validate that the service was in fact provided by the supplier as stated in their contract. Therefore, agencies still have to do “pre-screenings” of the invoices received.

In a previous interview with former Puerto Rico Industrial Development Corp. (PRIDCO) Director Eric Santiago, about concerns around the ERP, he argued that automating the processes in the Puerto Rico government would be too complicated.

At the time, Santiago said that agencies had different cultures and systems that would first need to be more standardized before creating a centralized system. He predicted that once the ERP begins to cover internal matters such as revenues, the system could fail.

For his part, Pantoja Rodríguez argued that this is part of the growing pains of implementing a new system. He later mentioned that he has been at Treasury since the agency implemented the Unified Internal Revenue System (SURI by its Spanish acronym) about 10 years ago and that today, SURI is still being updated.

The other task that the central government has tackled in the lead-up to and implementation of the ERP’s first phase has been training. To date, 20,000 users have interacted with the IntegraPR platform, which include employees, vendors and other individuals. Internally, 2,500 employees across several agencies have been trained, while the number for vendors is 700.

Comparing Complexities

During the initial presentation to journalists, as a way to contextualize the volume of billings and payments that IntegraPR has processed, Rivera Berríos insisted on highlighting the complexity of Puerto Rico’s ERP.

“It is important to note that according to experts who have implemented a system of this kind, this is the largest implementation of its type in the United States. The scale of the Puerto Rican government’s operations has made this one of the most complex ERP implementations undertaken in any nation,” he said.

When pressed about his sources, Rivera Berríos asserted during the round table that his information came from “research from experts.” A government press team later indicated that the source was feedback that the OMB received from the accounting firm Deloitte.

While Puerto Rico is attempting a complex operation to overhaul many disjointed internal finances and planning systems, it’s unclear what metrics were used for the aforementioned assessment.

To provide context, the California government’s ERP, named Financial Information System for California and colorfully abbreviated as Fi$Cal, processes over $430 billion annually for 150 departments and serves over 200,000 suppliers. Meanwhile, Texas’ Centralized Accounting and Payroll/Personnel System moves more than $300 billion annually and provides services to more than 100 agencies. New York State’s ERP system, called the Statewide Financial System, manages around 70 agencies with a total yearly budget of $230 billion.