How I changed the law with a GitHub pull request

Enlarge / The DC Council meets at the John A. Wilson building. (credit: Wally Gobetz / Flickr)

Recently, I found a typo in the District of Columbia's legal code and corrected it using GitHub. My feat highlights the groundbreaking way the District manages its legal code.

As a member of the DC Mayor's Open Government Advisory Group, I was researching the law that establishes DC's office of open government, which issues regulations and advisory opinions for the District's open meetings law (OMA) and open records law (FOIA). The law was updated last month, and something seemed to have changed: there was no longer a reference to issuing advisory opinions for FOIA. Comparing the DC Code to the act that made the change, I noticed that something was amiss in section (d):

(credit: dccouncil.us)

(d) The Office of Open Government may issue advisory opinions on the implementation of subchapter I of Chapter 5 of Title 2.

It had a typo.

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