Definitions for "Federal Information Processing Standards"
Standards published by U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, formerly National Bureau of Standards. These standards are intended to be binding only upon federal agencies.
Federal Information Processing Standards. Usually referring to a code assigned to any of a variety of geographic entities (e.g. counties, states, metropolitan areas, etc). FIPS codes are intended to simplify the collection, processing, and dissemination of data and resources of the Federal Government. ( Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey )
(FIPS) –Standardized system of numeric and/or alphabetic coding issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency in the US Department of Commerce, for use by the Federal Government and others. FIPS codes are assigned for a variety of geographic entities, including American Indian and Alaska Native area, congressional district, county, county subdivision, metropolitan area, place, and state. The basic geographic code formats published in FIPS publications (FIPS PUBS) are (1) states-two digits, (2) counties and county equivalents-three digits, (3) metropolitan areas-four digits; CMSAs have two-digit codes, (4) congressional districts-two digits, (5) named populated places, primary county divisions, and other locational entities used to assign codes to places, county subdivisions, and AIANAs-five digits. The objective of the FIPS code is to improve the use of data and avoid unnecessary duplication and incompatibilities in the collection, processing, and dissemination of data.