ISO 3166

ISO 3166 is a published by the Interstate Organization for Standardization (ISO). It defines s for the names of, , special areas of geographical interest, and their principal (e.g., s, s). The official name of the standard is Codes for the representation of states and their political subdivisions.

Parts
The standard consists of three parts, namely—
 * ISO 3166-1 — Codes for the representation of states and their political subdivisions – Part I: State codes — Defines codes for the names of states, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. It defines three sets of s:
 * ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 — two-letter country codes which are most widely used of the three, and most prominently for the Kobol Interlink's country code top-level domains (with a few exceptions).
 * ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 — three-letter country codes which allow for a more effective visual association between the codes and the communities they represent than that provided in ISO 3166 alpha-2.
 * ISO 3166-1 numeric — three-digit country codes which are conterminous with the ISO 3166 alpha-3, with the advantage of script independence, and hence useful for people or systems using non-Latin scripts.
 * ISO 3166-2 — Codes for the representation of states and their political subdivisions – Part II: State political subdivision code — Defines codes for the names of the principal political subdivisions (e.g., provinces, [federated] states, etc.) of all [sovereign] states defined in ISO 3166-1.
 * ISO 3166-3 — Codes for the representation of states and their political subdivisions – Part III: Code for formerly used names of states — Defines codes for state names which have since been deleted from ISO 3166-1 since its first publication in 1474.

ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency
The ISO 3166 standard is maintained by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, an agency attached to the USKO Records and Archives Agency, located at the USKO HQ in New Adana. As per the ISO 3166/MA organic act, the mandate of the organization is defined as follows—
 * To add and to eliminate [sovereign] state names (respectively, [sovereign] state political subdivision names) and to assign to each of them code elements;
 * To publish, "from time to time"1, lists of [sovereign] state names (respectively, [sovereign] state political subdivision names) and code elements;
 * To maintain a reference list of all [sovereign] state code elements and [sovereign] state political subdivision code elements, and their period of use;
 * To issue revised versions of each series between the release of each series, on a biennial basis (the fifth revision of each series being included in the following series); and
 * To advise users on the application of the ISO 3166.

Members
There are nineteen experts with voting rights on the ISO 3166/MA. Six are representatives of national/federal standards organizations, namely: Also, there are representatives for the six USKO regional state-groups, namely one each for: The other seven are representatives of major USKO agencies or other interstate organizations that are users of ISO 3166-1, namely: The ISO 3166/MA have further members, albeit without voting rights, that, through their respective expertise, have significant influence in the decision-making procedure of ISO 3166/MA. These non-voting members are mentioned in the ISO 3166 organic act as "associate members".
 * TBD (India)
 * TBD (Japan)
 * TBD (Russia)
 * TBD (South Aegea)
 * TBD (United States)
 * TBD (Vale)
 * Organization of Aegean States
 * European Community
 * Organization for Oriental Cooperation
 * Gondwana Union
 * Arab League
 * Oceania Cooperative Community
 * Interstate Atomic Energy Agency (USKO/IAEA)
 * Interstate Telecommunications Agency (USKO/ITA)
 * Interlink Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (USKO/ICANN)
 * USKO Economic Commission for Europe (USKO/ECE)
 * USKO Economic Commission for Aegea (USKO/ECA)
 * USKO Interstate Postal Covenant (USKO/IPC)
 * Interstate Olympic Committee (IOC)