The New Daylight Saving Time: Is Your Agency Ready?
New Daylight Saving Time requires checks of computer systems
This year, new federal rules will extend Daylight Saving Time (DST)by four weeks as a result of the national Energy Policy Act of 2005. This means Daylight Saving Time will start and end differently than the current rules built into your organization's computer systems. Systems may record inaccurate time if adjustments are not made.
Previously, Daylight Saving Time started on the first Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October. Now Daylight Saving Time will begin on the second Sunday in March (three weeks earlier) and end on the first Sunday in November (one week later).
Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time will begin on March 11 and end on November 4, providing four additional weeks of daylight saving time.
Technology that keeps time for accurate tracking of events will be affected. The obvious applications involve calendaring and scheduling. Many transaction logs are the legal record of the transactions they record, and having them off by an hour can cause legal implications.
The Commonwealth Office of Technology (COT) has been preparing for the time change and assures its customers that all COT services affected by the change will be updated accordingly. Commonwealth Data Center staff are making necessary adjustments to the shared infrastructure. The e-government and e-commerce infrastructure has been prepared for the changes. Still, there are actions that each agency Information Technology Officer (ITO) and business system owner needs to take to ensure that an inventory of all critical business systems is conducted and necessary adjustments are made prior to the DST change. Consider that business systems may also be affected by automated security, surveillance, HVAC and other facility-related systems. Fortunately, patches and fixes are available for most systems and can be found online. While this problem invokes memories of Y2K, the DST problem is on a much smaller scale.
To accommodate the DST change, most IT systems must be patched. Otherwise, timestamps will be off, and some applications may fail to work. System administrators and IT employees must plan to apply these patches or fixes to any device having to do with dates and times. Real and anticipated consequences for failing to address this issue may mean more than a missed meeting or appointment – the entire system could be disrupted.
What Agency ITOs Need to Do
It is important for Agency ITOs to review existing IT asset management data or take a thorough inventory of all assets including desktops, laptops, servers, databases, non-COT-supported e-mail messaging, smartphones, PDA’s and all other applications that have a time-sensitive function or maintain an internal clock. Many applications that do have an internal clock are run off a network, or are automatically set to change at certain dates. Suppliers of mobile devices, including wireless PDAs and smartphones, have already alerted users that the devices will not update their clocks for the new DST change and a software patch must be installed. For those devices or applications that are dependent on an hourly time stamp, manual intervention will likely be required.
Other systems, devices and applications that may be affected if no patches, fixes or adjustments are made include:
- homegrown software applications
- employee time reporting systems
- transaction receipts
- electronic submittals of payments, proposals, permits or license applications
- systems or applications with time-tracking logs
- electronic access control key card systems for facilities
- electronic PBXs, IVR and auto-attendant systems
- fax machines, copiers and multi-function products (MFP)
- switches, routers, NTP appliances
- mobile data capture devices
- electronic medical record notations
- intelligent transportation systems
- electronic voting machines
While a missed meeting or appointment may be inconvenient, an entire application or database entry that is operating on the wrong time may disrupt critical business processes and produce unwanted results if it goes unresolved.
Many software and application providers have already made patches and upgrades available online or offered remediation advice via their websites. Agency ITOs are strongly encouraged to take a closer look at all applications and systems under their jurisdiction to ensure all appropriate fixes are applied to address the potential problems that may arise. COT is prepared to assist you in this transition if necessary.
Click here for additional Daylight Savings Time resources.