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David Zvenyach
There are precious few engineers who understand law, or lawyers who understand engineering. David Zvenyach is the rare combination of both – and as a bonus, he also works as the General Counsel of the DC Council. In 2012, when a software developer asked for a copy of the D.C. Code to host as a public service, David didn’t have one to give, under a contract with the District’s Code publisher. But instead of stonewalling, David worked with the developer at the end of the publishing contract to build an open-source, restriction-free version of the D.C. Code, and he released the software under an open-source license on GitHub. David is a hacker and a tinkerer – he builds scores of useful apps himself using government data. But he is also a model for other open law advocates inside government.