FIPS 10

FIPS 10 is the common term for the U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard No. 10 "Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions". The fourth revision is current as of April 1995.

This standard has importance for the electronic databases of the USA, especially in military and government agencies dealing with external affairs. It introduces shorthand codes for the countries and their subdivisions (states, counties) for every administrative entity in the world. The digraphs are usually not identical with the ISO country codes or names within UN organizations.

This can be shown easily with the digraphs of country codes. The ISO country codes reflect the self-given proper name of the countries, GB (Great Britain), ES (Espana), DE (Deutschland), while FIPS 10 names adhere to widespread names in the US public, UK (United Kingdom), SP (Spain), GM (Germany).