Featured Core Datasets: Comprehensive Country Codes and Country List

Posted on 11 July 2015 by Dan Fowler

Are you in need of a clean, well maintained list of all countries and their associated international codes in CSV and JSON? If so, you might consider the country-codes and country-list data packages available at data.okfn.org.

Country Codes, using source data from ISO, the CIA World Factbook, and others, provides comprehensive information for countries in the world, including their respective ISO 3166 codes, ITU dialing codes, ISO 4217 currency codes, and many others.
Country List provides a subset of the information found in country-codes, for use when you only need a country’s two-character ISO 3166 code and its name in English.

Country Codes

Often, different databases that provide country-level information may use different unique identifiers for each country, adding significant friction to the process of using the data they provide. By linking all standardized identifiers in one place, Country Codes can provide a useful table on which to join distinct datasets and much more.

Core Datasets

Due to the value they provide, these datasets have been designated “core” datasets as part of the part of the Frictionless Data initiative. The Core Datasets project is about collecting and maintaining (curating) important and commonly-used datasets in a high-quality, standardized, and easy-to-use form: in particular, as up-to-date, well-structured Data Packages. These datasets are available now for inspection on the site, and are downloadable in either CSV or JSON format for use in your next application, website, or spreadsheet.

We need help suggesting, preparing and maintaining a set of “core” datasets as Data Packages. To get involved, see our previous call for data curators. Also check out the Core Datasets category on our new discussion forum.