This system is based on Data Packages, a simple but flexible protocol for storing dataset.
It was created and supported by Frictionless Data, an open-data collaboration/initiative developing and maintaning open source tools for data curation and distribution.
Data packages ars based on the simple combination of tabular text files (CSV/TSV) to store data, and a JSON file (datapackage.json) storing metadata of the datasets and the tables' fields.
The simplicity of the concept makes it very flexible and easy to integrate with existing data distribution portals and technologies.
A tutorial illustrating the process of producing and distributing a Data Package can be found here. Any editor able to open text files can be used to work on data packages. A web-based interface, the Data Package Creator, can be used to quickly and intuitively create, modify, or export data packages.