Residents of the District of Columbia now have a new way to comment on proposed legislation before the City Council, MadisonDC. Today, David Grosso, a DC Councilman-at-Large, introduced the new initiative to collaboratively draft laws online in a release and video on YouTube.

“As we encourage more public engagement in the legislative process, I hope D.C. residents will take a moment to log onto the Madison project,” said Councilmember Grosso. “I look forward to seeing the public input on my proposed bills.”

MadisonDC has its roots in the first Congressional hackathon, back in 2011. The event spawned a beta version of the Madison Project, an online platform to where lawmakers could crowdsource legislative markup. It was deployed first by the office of Representative Darrell Issa, crowdsourcing comments on several bills. The code was subsequently open sourced and now has been deployed by the OpenGov Foundation as a way to publish municipal codes online, along with other uses.

“We are excited to support Councilmember Grosso’s unprecedented efforts to welcome residents – and their ideas – directly into the local lawmaking process,” said Seamus Kraft, co-founder & executive director of The OpenGov Foundation, on the nonprofit organization’s blog. “But what really matters is that we’re going to produce better City Council bills, with fewer frustrations and unintended consequences. These three bills are only a start. The ultimate goal of MadisonDC is transforming D.C.’s entire policymaking machine for the Internet Age, creating an end-to-end, on-demand collaboration ecosystem for both citizens and city officials. The possibilities are limitless.”

The first three bills on MadisonDC are the D.C. Urban Farming and Food Security Act of 2014, the Marijuana Legalization and Regulation Act of 2013, and the Open Primary Elections Amendment Act of 2014.

The DC Open Government Office at the city’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, commended the effort with a tweet:

DCs #OpenGov office commends @cmdgrosso @FoundOpenGov 4 launch of #MadisonDC-free tool 4 citizen participation in gov http://t.co/5ISqx0LFMW

— DCOPENGOV (@DCOPENGOV) May 16, 2014

Councilman Grosso further engaged the public on Twitter this afternoon, inviting public comment on his proposed legislation.

@maarston Here's the link, please add these comments to the bill directly! http://t.co/zDel2fYQSk Thanks for your interest! #opengov

— David Grosso (@cmdgrosso) May 16, 2014

This post has been updated to include more statements and social media updates.