Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) are developed by NIST, in accordance with the Information Management Technology Act. The goal of FIPS is to create government procurement standards for interoperability and security where no comparable industry standards exist. Specific FIPS publications document requirements for particular security technologies such as encryption, hashing algorithms, and digital signatures. Hardware and software can be FIPS-certified.
References:
http://www.itl.nist.gov/fipspubs/geninfo.htm
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsFIPS.html
http://www.drummondgroup.com/pdfs/FIPS_In_a_Nutshell_Feb.2005_Final.pdf