Cloud computing costs for Healthcare.gov more than quintuple original estimates

Oct. 2, 2013: A man looks over the Affordable Care Act signup page on the HealthCare.gov website in New York. (Reuters)

The federal government will spend more than five times the originally contracted amount for computing cloud software, according to government contracts released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

CMS released documents for its IT contract with Verizon Terremark, which is running the cloud component of Healthcare.gov, on Thursday. The latest documents, which were first reported by Nextgov.com, explain that the original contract has ballooned from $10.8 million to $59.9 million since 2011.

CMS said it “could not have contemplated” the need for additional IT framework that brought millions in extra costs.

The original contract was altered 12 times between its initial award and Nov. 30, 2013, the administration’s self-imposed deadline to “fix” Healthcare.gov following the website’s disastrous rollout last October.

The documents released Thursday detail the final two changes needed to “improve performance of the Marketplace” before Nov. 30, which cost an additional $13.9 million.

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