It has been suggested that FIPS 10 be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

The FIPS 10-4 standard, Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions, lists two-letter country codes that are used by the U.S. Government for geographical data processing in many publications, such as the CIA World Factbook. The standard is also known as DAFIF 0413 ed 7 Amdt. No. 3 (Nov 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.

On September 2, 2008, FIPS 10-4 was one of ten standards withdrawn by NIST as a Federal Information Processing Standard.^[1]

[edit] References