WASHINGTON • The federal government has renewed for another year the contract of Serco Inc., whose Affordable Care Act application processing facility in Wentzville was hit by whistleblower allegations that workers there had little to do.

The new taxpayer-paid contract, which began July 1, will be worth about $98 million. The first-year contract was worth about $114 million, according to figures supplied Thursday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the contract.

“We have an option to renew the contract on an annual basis and we determined that Serco met the terms and conditions of the contract during the base period,” said Aaron Albright, a spokesman for CMS. The contract was renewed on June 27.

The federal government, under the auspices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, gave a five-year, $1.2 billion contract last year to Serco Inc., a British based company with American headquarters in northern Virginia. The contract has one-year renewal options.