[rrhm]

You seem to be missing the point they are trying to make. It's not so much about releasing (delivering) the data as it is about receiving user-contributed updated data in a more or less controlled way, that may allow them to curate it and update their official data. Koordinates seems great for publishing the data, but after briefly browsing its features, it does not allow users to contribute to the updating process, except perhaps via a centralized way, which seems to be what they are trying to avoid.

Github may or may not be the best tool they could have used to accomplish their objective; there are probably better tools out there and Github is barely "good enough"; however, "good enough" usually cuts it. On the other hand since their goal is to allow user-contribution, Koordinate is definitely not the right tool, at least not in an immediately obvious way.

[chicagocdo]

Actually, our primary objective is to release data under an open source license so it can be used by businesses, non-profits, or open source projects, like OpenStreetMaps. Since we are releasing it on GitHub, we're going to experiment with the idea of merging changes made by users. This is an experiment for the community and government, we don't know how many pull requests will be made and the quality of those changes. We're excited to see what happens with data on GitHub to see if we can improve data quality.