Page "Federal Information Processing Standard" Paragraph 7

The U. S. Census Bureau used FIPS place codes database to identify legal and statistical entities for county subdivisions, places, and American Indian areas, Alaska Native areas, or Hawaiian home lands when they needed to present census data for these areas.

In response to the NIST decision, the Census Bureau is in the process of transitioning over to the GNIS Feature ID, which will be completed after the 2010 Census.

Until then, previously issued FIPS place codes, renamed " Census Code ," will continue to be used, with the Census bureau assigning new codes as needed for their internal use during the transition.