The Council of the District of Columbia posts updates to the D.C. Code via GitHub, a site that allows users to host and edit digital code. But Github does more than just allow the city to digitally publish laws—it also ensures a higher level of legal review. And not just by attorneys.

The “Git” in GitHub is an open-source version control system that stores all edits in a central location/repository. You can “fork” a repository and create a new project based on a project that already exists. You also can make a “pull request” that allows you to modify a project, a revision which an administrator will decline or accept.

For example, Joshua Tauberer, a hacker who helped create D.C.'s GitHub and currently sits on the D.C. Mayor's Open Government Advisory Group, sent a pull request after he spotted an incorrect hyperlink on the site, according to an article he wrote on Ars Technica.

“On the outside, all I really did was send a notice to the council about a possible typo,” Tauberer said in an interview. However, the process occurred transparently and quickly through the council's GitHub page, which took years to create.

Previously, D.C. council members' enacted legislation was codified into titles by attorneys and legal publishers such as Westlaw and LexisNexis, explained Dave Zvenyach, who served as general counsel to D.C.'s council and helped configure the code's GitHub along with Tauberer.

Publishing those laws online and as hard copies would take months, Zvenyach said. “I remember spending a lot of time checking the website to see if it had been updated,” he recalled.

Now, a law passed by D.C.'s council is updated first in its GitHub. When the council is ready to publish an updated code, it creates a GitHub release which updates the D.C. Law Library's HTML website. “As a lawyer, it means a lot less busywork on what the law is on any given day,” Zvenyach explained.

Although GitHub provides a speedier way to update and interact with the D.C. Code, it does present challenges, such as keeping the content up to date and ensuring correct data is used.

“There's a lot of opportunities for misunderstanding,” said Open Law Library co-founder and CEO David Greisen. “We work directly with the government to make sure that their official codes are clean [and] error free to begin with.”

Greisen described a “spell check on steroids” drafting tool that attorneys for the city council can use in Microsoft Word to catch errors before a bill becomes law. He said the precaution is used to prevent minor errors, similar to what Tauberer caught, and larger errors that require passing a new bill to correct.

D.C.'s legislative protocols prevent unscrupulous edits from becoming listed on D.C.'s GitHub page, Greisen said. He explained that pull requests must meet “strong institutional safeguards in place in D.C.” before they are implemented. Indeed, Tauberer wrote that his pull request was approved by the council's codification lawyer.

“We in no way impact their approval process,” Greisen said of Open Law Library's nonauthoritative role in updating D.C.'s code. “We just enhance the speed they do the work.”