Over the weekend, a group of 25 delegates in Reyjavik delivered the draft of the world’s first crowdsourced constitution, which could be ratified by referendum without the need of further input from Iceland’s parliament.

On Friday (Saturday in Manila), the Iceland Constitutional Council (Stjórnlagaráð), which is composed of ordinary citizens, submitted to Iceland’s parliament (Althingi) the document, which integrated feedback from hundreds of other citizens online. (See: Iceland crowdsources Charter Change on social media.)

The first draft was posted on the group’s website in April to elicit other citizens to comment on Stjórnlagaráð’s Facebook Page, as well as interact with council members on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. Less than four months later and after 16 revisions of the draft posted online which gathered 16,000 comments, the draft constitution was ready.

“All delegates agree that the population should be given the chance to vote on the new constitution before Althingi’s final vote on it," the council said on its website, affirming the need for a referendum before the draft constitution is acted upon by Iceland’s parliament.

Oxford Dictionaries Online defines “crowdsourcing" as “the practice whereby an organization enlists a number of freelancers, paid or unpaid, to work on a specific task or problem."

An article on news site Mashable pointed out that while Iceland may be the first nation to use social media for charter change, “it is not alone" because earlier in July Stanford University volunteers “created a site where Egyptians could discuss their proposed constitution." — KBK, GMA News