Digital Trends has an informative article on the cost of building the website Healthcare.gov which has been plagued with problems. As with most government programs, the cost has soared from an initial estimate of $93.7 million to $634 million. And in as much as it does not work as advertised, many more dollars will be spent trying to fix it.
"Given the complicated nature of federal contracts, it’s difficult to make a direct comparison between the cost to develop Healthcare.gov and the amount of money spent building private online businesses. But for the sake of putting the monstrous amount of money into perspective, here are a few figures to chew on: Facebook, which received its first investment in June 2004, operated for a full six years before surpassing the $600 million mark in June 2010. Twitter, created in 2006, managed to get by with only $360.17 million in total funding until a $400 million boost in 2011. Instagram ginned up just $57.5 million in funding before Facebook bought it for (a staggering) $1 billion last year. And LinkedIn and Spotify, meanwhile, have only raised, respectively, $200 million and $288 million."
Update (10/11/13): Canadian officials fired IT firm behind troubled Obamacare website.
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