As a 2013 Presidential Innovation Fellow, I saw how hard the Obama administration was working to make the Federal Government a more open and transparent entity. It's not easy! There are so many agencies and a lot of people with differing opinions about the value (and effort) of making things open and transparent.
This platform, built by 2015 and 2016 Presidential Innovation Fellows, members of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and many others, is a collection of custom-built code that was written for the Federal Government and making that code open-source so that other agencies and people anywhere can share, reuse, and contribute to that code. I'll let the makers chime in with more details!
GA