The more voices involved in the process of refining the ACORD standard, the more reflective of the industry the process becomes.

So when the recommendations resulting from a late January meeting of the ACORD Life Product Working Group drew lively debate, it meant the process was working, said Cathy Strovinskas, one of the working group's four co-chairs.

The meeting was held at the Charlotte, NC offices of Strovinskas' employer, COSS Development Corp, a Microsoft insurance industry partner. Specifically, the topic of discussion was the correct way to model benefits and riders for life insurance contracts. The current data model within the standard supports two objects for doing so - coverage and coverage option. While there are minor differences between the two, in truth whether a rider is characterized as a coverage or a coverage option likely depends on which company is using the standard and how they implement it.

The discussion was perhaps more significant for how it highlights the process of refining the XML-based standard, than for the specifics of the meeting. To help the standard to evolve, means striking a delicate balance between adding the new properties and objects to the standard that would accommodate new needs, while avoiding introducing unnecessary modifications that may grow cumbersome over time. And part of that process is identifying redundancies and perceived problems within the model that have been introduced over the years.

"Requests to deprecate portions of the data model rarely get voted in, because of the potential negative impact to the current implementers of the standard," Strovinskas said. "What we are trying to do is carefully analyze submitted data model changes to prevent the introduction of additional redundancies and problems as well as provide documentation on handling these nuances that are already part of the standard."

Internally within ACORD, there were initiatives to migrate to an uber version of the data model, slated as version 3.0, which would not be backwards compatible to past versions. Because of the effort required by volunteer members to design the new model and the cost for current users to rev up to it, the current consensus is to refine what already exists.

The group's initial recommendation had been to suggest that users not use coverage option, and make coverage recursive, meaning a coverage can "nest" under an existing coverage, as a sort of secondary, tertiary, etc coverage. The resulting debate from members outside of the working group has led to alternatives. One likely alternative under consideration is to make coverage and coverage options identical by adding the properties missing from each to the other. Other options are also being studied.

The debate highlights the importance of involvement in the process.

"Everyone has their own internal processes that are dependent on the ACORD standard," Strovinskas said. "Being involved means you can insure your particular requirements are met and have the ability to influence the direction of the standards development."

And it spotlights the industry's increasing usage of the standard. "XML is currently the most sophisticated format for distributed data and is used throughout the World Wide Web. This has resulted in increased usage of ACORD standards," Strovinskas said. "As a solution provider for the life insurance industry, it is now a requirement for most of our existing and potential customers."