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 four-character codes to be used for the principal administrative divisions are identified in FIPS 10-4 and on NGA's GEOnet Names Server (GNS) web site, under the section titled "Information on Codes for Geopolitical Entities." Follow the link titled "First Order Administrative Division Codes" to an alphabetical index of the administrative codes taken from FIPS 10-4.

The GNS also provides access to the NGA database of foreign geographic feature names. This is additional information that is related to, but not part of, the data standard. The geographic area of coverage is worldwide, excluding the United States and Antarctica. ASCII (tab delimited format) or ZIP files of geographic names information covering countries or geopolitical areas are available for download from this site. Approximately 20,000 of the database's 3.5 million features are updated monthly with names information approved by the US BGN.

Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 10-4, "Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions", dated April 1995.

To ensure compliance with the Service Information and Technology Architecture (SITA), 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 ISO 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.