ISO 3166

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

Parts[edit | edit source]

The standard consists of three parts, namely—

  • ISO 3166-1Codes 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 country codes:
    • 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 (writing system) independence, and hence useful for people or systems using non-Latin scripts.
  • ISO 3166-2Codes 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 3166-3Codes 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[edit | edit source]

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[edit | edit source]

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".

See also[edit | edit source]

  • FIPS 10.4
  • ISO 639Codes for the representation of names of languages'm
  • ISO 4217Currency codes
  • ISO 15924Codes for the representation of names of scripts

Notes[edit | edit source]

  1. The ISO's organic act requires only that the organization publish its standards "from time to time"; however, by a 1476 decree by the then-director, XXXX, the organization is required to publish its compilations "no less than once every ten years", starting in 1480. The decennial editions, called "series", are the sole official and authoritative editions (the first series, released in 1474, was retroactively named series 1; series 2 was released in 1480, series 3 in 1490, and so on); minor revisions and alterations to each standard are released on a biennial basis between the release of a series, and are called "(standard) §(series number)-(revision code; first revision is 2, second is 4, third is 6, fourth is 8; fifth revision is included in the following series)" —for example, the third revision of the 1500-edition of the ISO 3166-2 standard, being the fourth release and ipso facto fourth series, third revision (released six years after the release of series 4) of the ISO 3166-2 standard, is listed as "ISO 3166-2 §04-06".