This is a very common reaction that shows a lack of experience in dealing with scale IT systems. You're correct that a simple DB with some forms would be cheap

This is a very common reaction that shows a lack of experience in dealing with scale IT systems. You're correct that a simple DB with some forms would be cheap. But integration tends to be crazy expense. For this sort of system, other things that also need to be covered: 1. Billing integration. Including changes to billing codes, bill (fine) printing, testing. 2. Audit integration. Because whenever money is handled, audit follows. 3. Customer support integration. Including UI for customer service, training, testing. This is often a very complex item because customer service already have a zillion systems they have to use and their training requirements are ongoing and expensive, so they want you to integrate with their existing systems instead of giving them a brand new thing, and integrate with their existing training processes, etc etc. 4. Integrate with all those hand-held readers. inc vendor compliance, testing etc. 5. Contract management. You have a contract with the government and they'd like to know that you did what you claim you did. So there's teams of people to deal with on an ongoing basis. 6. Project management. There's more than one person working on this, and a lot of complex integration requiring changes in other systems => extensive project management. 7. Ongoing changes to requirements, often conflicting. All the integration points above are moving targets, so expect that they'll have to be re-done a few times both before and after launch. 8. Arse covering. You now have a large contract with the US Government. You will sued and they will get sued (typically by whomever didn't win the contract). Vast amounts of documentation covering _everything_, including documenting the process by which documents are written => tech writers galore, plus lawyers plus lawyers. Honestly, this is barely scratching the surface. I haven't even touched the (expensive) work before the contract is even signed. $190M doesn't go very far!