IAS

IAS is an abbreviation that can refer to several distinct entities and concepts across different fields. In the context of public administration in India, the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the premier civil service of the Union Government, responsible for policy implementation, district administration, and advising ministers. Candidates are selected through the highly competitive Civil Services Examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission, followed by extensive training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. Officers typically begin their careers as district collectors or deputy secretaries and may later occupy senior positions in ministries, state governments, or international bodies.

In the realm of accounting, IAS denotes International Accounting Standards, a set of principles and guidelines issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to harmonize financial reporting across jurisdictions. These standards were largely superseded by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) but continue to influence the development of global accounting practices.

The term IAS also appears in computer history as the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) computer, an early stored‑program machine built in the 1950s under the direction of John von Neumann. Its architecture laid the groundwork for most modern computers and introduced concepts such as the binary instruction set and the stored‑program principle.

Other uses of IAS include the International Association of Statisticians, Intelligent Adaptive Systems in engineering, and the IATA airport code for the former Atemi Airport in Tanzania. The appropriate meaning of IAS is determined by the specific disciplinary or geographic context in which the abbreviation appears.