Accenture's Federal Services division has won the contract to improve HealthCare.gov, the online health insurance marketplace that failed to handle the amount of traffic that rushed to it when it was launched in October as part of President Barack Obama's healthcare reforms.

The large IT consulting and outsourcing company did not say what exactly it would do as part of the one-year contract. A company spokesperson declined to comment, saying it was “not granting interviews at this time.”

Accenture will replace CGI, another huge IT outsourcing firm, whose contract for the online marketplace is ending in February, according to a Washington Technology report. CGI has caught a lot of the blame for problems with the website.

The $45m contract Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has now given to Accenture is only an initial phase of the project, the company said in a statement. This phase will include a transition plan to define the scope of work.

“The contract will be based on mutually agreed upon work plans, which will help define the final value of the one-year contract,” according to Accenture.

This will not be the first federal website Accenture will have worked on. It has built and continues to maintain public-facing sites for the likes of the Internal Revenue Service, the Census Bureau and the Department of Education.

“Accenture will bring deep healthcare industry insight as well as proven experience building large-scale, public-facing websites to continue improving HealthCare.gov,” David Moskovits, head of the company's federal services business, said in a statement.