About CommonBenefits
CommonBenefits is an open protocol for describing benefits programs, the households they serve, and the data exchanged between the systems that administer them.
What is CommonBenefits?
Section titled “What is CommonBenefits?”CommonBenefits defines a shared set of data models, like people, households, programs, applications, and eligibility determinations, that benefits systems can use to exchange information without building a custom integration for every pair of systems.
The protocol is implemented in TypeSpec, a language for defining APIs that compiles to OpenAPI, JSON Schema, and other common formats. This makes it easy to:
- Validate compliance across implementations
- Generate libraries and tools in different languages
- Extend the protocol without breaking existing tools
Design principles
Section titled “Design principles”CommonBenefits is guided by a few key principles:
- Standardization: A shared language for describing benefits programs and the people they serve
- Extensibility: A core schema with support for program-specific and jurisdiction-specific extensions
- Interoperability: Models and APIs that work across systems, not just within them
- Portability: Benefits data that households and agencies can carry with them
Background and inspiration
Section titled “Background and inspiration”CommonBenefits builds on the design patterns and community principles behind:
- JSON Schema: For structured, self-validating data
- OpenAPI: For generating consistent APIs
- FHIR: For standardizing complex data across a fragmented ecosystem
Learn more
Section titled “Learn more” Getting started Find your way around the documentation.
Protocol overview How the protocol is organized and how each schema page is built.
Models Explore the core domain resources defined by the protocol.
API docs Browse the API endpoints defined by the protocol.