The FIPS 10-4 standard, Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions , was a list of two-letter country codes that were used by the U.S. Government for geographical data processing in many publications, such as the CIA World Factbook . The standard was also known as DAFIF 0413 ed 7 Amdt. No. 3 (November 2003) and as DIA 65-18 ( Defense Intelligence Agency , 1994, "Geopolitical Data Elements and Related Features").

The FIPS 10-4 codes are similar to (but sometimes incompatible with) the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes . The standard also includes codes for the top-level subdivision of the countries, similar to but usually incompatible with the ISO 3166-2 standard.

History [ edit ]

On September 2, 2008, FIPS 10-4 was one of ten standards withdrawn by NIST as a Federal Information Processing Standard. ^[1] The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency continued to maintain the FIPS 10-4 codes in an informal document titled "Geopolitical Entities and Codes" (GEC) until December 31, 2014, ^{[2] [3]} retiring the GEC on March 31, 2015. ^[4]

On January 23, 2013, the U.S. Department of Defense released the first edition of "Geopolitical Entities, Names and Codes" (GENC), a U.S. federal government profile of ISO 3166-1 and ISO 3166-2 . GENC is designed to be compatible with ISO 3166 but reflect U.S. government diplomatic recognition and naming decisions by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names ; it is intended to be the basis for a future U.S. national profile of the ISO standards. ^[5]

See also [ edit ]

• List of FIPS country codes
• List of FIPS region codes

References [ edit ]