Worldwide Geographic Location Codes lists the number and letter codes federal agencies should use in designating geographic locations anywhere in the United States or abroad in computer programs. Use of standard codes facilitates the interchange of machine-readable data from agency to agency within the federal community and between federal offices and state and local groups.

Authorities

Codes for states, counties, and cities are based on two Federal Information Processing Standards--FIPS 5-2 and FIPS 6-4--issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology under the provisions of Public Law 89-306 (commonly known as the Brooks Act) and the Office of Management and Budget Circular A-86 as amended by the Computer Security Act of l987, Public Law 100-235. For U.S. possessions and for foreign countries, codes are based on FIPS 10-3. Act of l987, Public Law 100-235. For U.S. possessions and for foreign countries, codes are based on FIPS 10-4.

Requests for New Codes

Federal entities may request the assignment of additional codes for any populated area--except a military installation--from the U.S. General Services Administration. Such  requests should be made in writing to the contact group at the top right of this page.

Search for Geographic Locator Codes

Enter a location in the box below. If searching for a state, use that state's postal abbreviation. For example, type AL for Alabama.

By default this query program looks for exact matches. For example, if searching for the city York, only GLC results that contain the word York will be returned. GLC results containing the word Yorkville are not displayed because the program searched and returned results that exactly match the word York. For information on more advanced search features such as wildcards, world matching and multiple word searches...see below.

Word Matching and Wildcards

Partial word matching is provided by adding an asterisk to the end of a word. For example, type york* to yield GLC results which include York, Yorkville, Yorkshire, etc. This feature is useful if the first query attempt returned nothing, or the spelling of the location is unclear. 

Please note that * can only be used to extend a word. *ville and y*ville will not yield a match for Yorkville.

Using Multiple Words to Broaden a Search

If entering a series of words (York Rockville Boston) the result will be a GLC list that contains matches to at least one of the three query words. By default, the search program treats multiple words are though they are separated by OR. The operator OR is basically a search modifier and informs the search program that the user would like to find any results that match York or Rockville or Boston. The results list will include the GLC codes for York, PA; Rockville, MD; Rockville, GA; and Boston, MA.

Using AND to Narrow the Search

If searching for an exact GLC location, or searching for a literal match to a location, use the word AND to separate the search words. For example, the search query York AND Pa (type AND in capital letters) will return the GLC code that exactly matches York, Pennsylvania. As noted earlier, a search without AND yields GLC results that either contain the word York or PA.