Geopolitical Entity Code:   Alpha

Principal Administrative Division Name:  Character Field

Principal Administrative Division Code:  Alphanumeric

Geopolitical Entity Code:  AA, where each A represents a letter from A through Z.

Principal Administrative Division Name:  Full name, up to a maximum of 60 characters,  including the letters A through Z and punctuation marks.

Principal Administrative Division Code:  AANN, where each A represents a letter from A through Z, and each N represents a number from 0 through 9. Punctuation marks are not allowed.

Geopolitical Entity Code:  CNTRYCODE

Principal Administrative Division Name:  ADM1NAME

Principal Administrative Division Code:  ADM1CODE

The values to be used for this data element are described in FIPS 10-4, "Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions", dated April 1995, and are current as of the date shown on the last FIPS 10-4 PUBLICATION CHANGE NOTICE issued by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), formerly known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency or NIMA.

Important Notice:  Effective September 2, 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced in the Federal Register, Volume 73, No. 170 (73FR 51276), that the Secretary of Commerce approved the withdrawal of 10 FIPS Publications, including FIPS 10-4. These FIPS were withdrawn because they are obsolete or have not been updated to adopt current voluntary industry standards, federal specifications, federal data standards, or current good practices for information security. 

Transition from FIPS to the GeoNET Names Server (GNS): The NGA, formerly known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency or NIMA, has maintenance authority for FIPS 10-4.  The GEOnet Names Server (GNS) provides access to the NGA and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (US BGN) database of foreign geographic feature names. The GNS database is the official repository of foreign place-name decisions approved by the US BGN, and contains 4 million features with 5.5 million names (approximate as of December 2008). The coordinate system for data served by GNS is WGS84. Coordinates in the GEOnet Names Server are approximate and are intended for finding purposes only. The online database is updated on a bi-weekly schedule.

Part 270, FW 6, Data Management and Standards, has been superceded by Part 274, FW 2, Establishing Service Data Standards.

Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 10-4, "Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions".

Service staff are strongly encouraged to utilize this data element in existing systems, data sets, databases, and information applications. Where existing systems and data-related items are not in compliance, they should be modified to achieve compatibility and implement this data standard.

This standard may be applied either in the two-letter format, in which only a basic entity is identified, or in the four-character format that identifies both a basic entity and one of its principal divisions. Principal (first-order) administrative divisions in different geopolitical entities (countries, dependencies, and areas of sovereignty) can have the same numeric code. Therefore, in data systems concerned with the identification of administrative divisions in more than one geopolitical entity, the two-letter country codes must be used in conjunction with the two-character administrative division codes identified in FIPS 10-4, 1995 April, "Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions ." For example, the Province of British Columbia in Canada is represented as CN02, the Aquataine Region France is represented as FR97, and the State of Alaska in the United States is represented as US02. The two-letter country codes and two-character administrative division codes will be handled as separate data fields in any new or modified automated system, and will not be combined in a single data field.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 3166-1:1997, "Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part I: Country Codes," is an international standard that was developed independently from FIPS 10-4. The key difference between these two standards is that FIPS 10-4 is a standard for basic geopolitical entities, and U.S. Government Printing OfficeISO 3166-1 is a standard for political entities. This means that codes are changed or applied using different criteria, i.e., changes to FIPS 10-4 codes are triggered by changes in territorial extent, while changes to ISO 3166 codes are triggered by changes in the names of entities. In addition, ISO 3166-1 is based on the country names obtained from the United Nations and, as a result, contains names that are not recognized by the US BGN. It may be necessary to use the ISO 3166-1 country names and codes in a new or existing system, data set, database, or information application, with or without the FIPS 10-4 country names and codes. For example, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) uses the ISO country codes in its permit numbers, and the CITES annual report produced by each country must use these codes to provide consistency. Thus, the Service Permit Issuance and Tracking System (SPITS) database incorporates the ISO country codes for reporting purposes. In these instances, the ISO country names and codes must be identified and labeled in such a manner as to clearly distinguish them from the FIPS 10-4 country names and codes.