Understanding the New Daylight Savings Time Adjustment

Did you know that Daylight Savings Time (DST) will start three weeks earlier this Spring, and one week later in the Fall? My wife mentioned that she had heard it was real early this year but didn't know why. Then I saw the date on the calendar: March 11th. That really IS early, I thought. But why?

You have to go back to August of 2005, when Congress passed, and President Bush signed, a sweeping energy bill that included the above adjustment to DST that begin in 2007. Part of a massive 1,700 page Energy Policy Act, the four-week extension could save the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil per day in energy use, the House Energy and Commerce committee claims. The reasoning behind DST was that if there was extra daylight in the evening, people would not use as much electricity for lighting as they normally would.

Well, 2007 is here and there are some potential issues and problems with this new schedule. Similar in nature to the widely publicized Millennium Y2K problems, the new DST timing will also have wide-ranging issues, albeit not as severe. The Y2K "Millennium Bug" was estimated to cost the global economy approximately $21 billion. I could not find any estimates yet on how much the changeover could cost businesses, but there are some definite areas of concern.

At worst, for residential home computers, it might be an inconvenience. When you talk home computers, you are more than likely talking Microsoft operating system (O.S.). So, what are the friendly folks at Microsoft, Apple, Linux, and Solaris doing about this major time adjustment, or better yet, what do YOU have to do?

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Windows Vista: no need to do anything. It's already programmed into the O.S.
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Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2): it will automatically update.
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Windows XP with Service Pack 1 (SP1): you will need to do a manual edit and reboot
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Windows 2000: manual edit and reboot
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Windows NT: manual edit and reboot
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Apple OS X: automatically updates
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Linux OS, including Suse 8.9, Red Hat EL, Desktop, and HP-UX: you have to install a patch and reboot
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Solaris 8,9, and 10: install patch and reboot
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AIX 5.3: install patch and reboot

For businesses, however, it's not quite as simple. Some of the problems affecting them are:

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processing sales transactions
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time-card management
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incorrect arrival and departure times in the travel industry
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late payments due to errors in bank transactions
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online trading applications could execute orders at the wrong time
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cell phone bills could erroneously charge callers for peak-rates at off-peak hours
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client appointments would be off-schedule, causing disruptions to large organizations
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centrally updating mobile devices such as laptops and smart phones
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calendar-synching of mobile phones

Updating Java applications is causing nightmares for systems engineers in large companies, where they face the possibility of having over 50 different versions of Sun Java in their environment. There's no patch that they can magically apply across the system with that disparate cocktail of Java.

So far I've only mentioned the problems identified in the United States, but the DST shift has far-reaching implications around the world. For instance, Canada and Bermuda conform to the U.S.-mandated change, not to mention all the time-zone shifts.

If you think all the above is bad, here's the kicker: The bill charges the Department of Energy with evaluating the precise effects on energy use and gives Congress the option of reverting to the 2005 daylight-saving time schedule after the study is complete. So, if our illustrious politicians decide they don't like the new DST, they will tell everyone to go back to the old DST! Then all the businesses that had to struggle with the March and November adjustments will have to do it all over again.

The worst aspect of all this is that some businesses are not even aware of the new DST schedule and are totally unprepared for the consequences. As a former I.T. guy myself, it amazes me that some companies have a cavalier approach to seemingly little things like this. But, most of us know how "little" things can snowball and come back to bite us in the butt.