Mission & Governance
The Benefit Plan Standard exists to promote a vendor‑neutral, open, and interoperable data model for benefit plan designs across all carriers and lines of business. Our mission is to eliminate data silos, empower consumers and employers to understand their health benefits, and accelerate innovation in the healthcare ecosystem.
Core Principles
- Openness — The specification, schema, and supporting documentation are publicly available under an open license. Anyone may use, implement, or extend the standard.
- Neutrality — The standard is not tied to any vendor, carrier, or commercial product. It is maintained by an independent standards committee.
- Transparency — All changes are proposed publicly via GitHub issues and pull requests. Major version changes undergo a public comment period.
- Extensibility — The core schema is designed to accommodate new lines of business and domain‑specific modules without breaking existing implementations.
- Community‑Driven — Stakeholders from carriers, brokers, employers, insurtechs, healthcare providers, and regulatory bodies are invited to participate in the governance process.
Governing Committee
The standard is stewarded by a governing committee that oversees versioning, modules, and outreach. The committee is responsible for:
- Approving schema changes and module proposals
- Maintaining the field definition matrix and crosswalk tables
- Publishing roadmaps and coordinating releases
- Managing the issue tracker and responding to feedback
The initial committee consists of the standard’s founders. As adoption grows, additional stakeholders will be invited to join.
Contributing
Contributions are welcome! You can:
- Report issues or suggest improvements in the schema repository’s issue tracker
- Submit pull requests for bug fixes, documentation improvements, or new examples
- Propose new modules by following the process outlined in Specification / Modules
- Participate in discussions via GitHub Discussions
See the FAQ for more details on contributing.