Country Codes

The need to use country codes for storing and analysing data, rather than names, are obvious: country names vary by language, have variations within the same language, can be ambiguous, and change from time to time. PSI has historically used 2-letters ISO codes, which normally are part of the internet domains for a country.

But 2-letters iso codes have shortcomings, including many collisions with the actual country name/ sound. 3-letters ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes provide a lot of combinations when compared with 2-letters codes, resulting in more ‘guessable’ country codes. It also eliminates the “NO” (Norway) and “NA” (Namibia) cases, which in computer code could be misinterpreted as logical operators. Last, the FHIR community, the standard that PSI is now deploying across its digital interventions, primarily uses 3 letters ISO codes.

Agreement: PSI will use from early 2023 ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 for:

• Storing country as a property/ value on its databases

• Naming of databases/ storage instances

• Naming of workspaces in the different management system: MS Teams, Confluence, Monday.com

• Setting user security at row level for data analysis

• Folder and File naming

Summary - reasoning behind the decision to move to 3-letters ISO codes for countries

• Enhanced readability across user bases

• most used coding system across the FHIR community

• 3-letter codes are harder for machines to misinterpret

Further reading:

• https://andrewwhitby.com/2021/01/08/the-right-country-codes/

• ISO - ISO 3166 — Country Codes