Although many folks from the Sunlight Foundation support the project, it has relatively decentralized control:
> This is an unusual, and occasionally chaotic, model for an open data project. the /unitedstates project is a neutral space; GitHub's permissions system allows many of us to share the keys, so no one person or institution controls it. What this means is that while we all benefit from each other's work, no one is dependent or "downstream" from anyone else. It's a shared commons in the public domain.
> This is an unusual, and occasionally chaotic, model for an open data project. the /unitedstates project is a neutral space; GitHub's permissions system allows many of us to share the keys, so no one person or institution controls it. What this means is that while we all benefit from each other's work, no one is dependent or "downstream" from anyone else. It's a shared commons in the public domain.
From http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/08/20/a-modern-appro...