Media Coverages
Countdown to 'Nuisance Disruption'
Daylight Savings Time: North American date processors brace for havoc
Peter Morton Washington Bureau Chief, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, March 01, 2007
Even the scientists at the nuclear research centre in Los Alamos, N.M., are a little worried.
It's not quite the "Y2K" phenomena when worries that the globe's computers would crash when the millennium began, but this latest computer crisis, quietly creeping up on the United States, Canada and Bermuda in less than two weeks, is causing intense anguish among data programmers across the continent.
Canada and tiny Bermuda reluctantly agreed to adopt the new daylight savings time schedule pushed through an energy-conscious Congress two years ago. It calls for moving up the traditional April 1 changing of the clocks by three weeks to March 11 in a bid to conserve energy.
Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress decided that having three weeks of an extra hour of sunlight in the evening would help reduce energy consumption. It also extended the change back in the fall by one week to the first Sunday of November.
While the jury is still out on how effective that will prove to be, the prospect of a changed DST is being taken seriously.
The stress of the early switchover prompted Mark Owens, head of the Los Alamos Information Systems and Technology Division, to issue an inter-office memo warning of the potential fallout.
"Lab employees who use computer- based calendars to schedule appointments should follow up with meeting attendees to ensure that meeting items show up properly on calendars," he said in his memo.
In issuing the caution, Los Alamos joined software manufacturers, including Microsoft, IBM, and Novell, in warning consumers that early daylight saving time may have a Y2K-like impact on computer or electronic systems with internal clocks. (Microsoft has a patch available for its Windows programs and the new Vista operating system already has it built in.)
"It's not going to be a tragic disruption, but it is certainly going to be a nuisance disruption," says John Pironti, head of risk management for the computer consulting firm Getronics.
"It's not a doomsday scenario - it's a discomfort scenario," he adds.
He said in an interview from New York that most analysts expect consumers to be caught largely unaware by the looming new "spring forward" deadline from Congress, suggesting their electronics datebooks will make them one hour later for their appointments after March 11.
In addition, he said electronic devices such as VCRs and other kinds of recorders may end up recording the wrong shows. Others have suggested that airline schedules and ATMs may have wrong times.
It appears, however, banks on both sides of the border have already moved to adjust their systems.
"We've been aware of this for a long time and, for customers, it will be business as usual," says Maura Drew-Lytle, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Bankers Association in Toronto.
Other analysts suggest the real problems will come with computers and huge banks of servers that store vast amounts of data and often talk to each other at pre-set times.
According to Gartner, the Stamford, Ct. research firm, most companies have simply chosen to ignore the looming deadline until now and are scrambling - perhaps too late - to meet the March 11 timetable.
"This is not Y2K scale, but it could generate business procedure and IT system problems that modestly disrupt smooth business operations, irritate customers and tarnish professional reputations," it said in a January report that was largely overlooked by companies.
Matt Zito, chief scientist at New York's GridApp Systems Inc., said in an interview that the fall-out from companies, especially those that rely on databases, could be potentially much worse than just annoying.
"When you think of the thousands and thousands of servers among the thousands of companies, you have to realize the devil will be in the details," he says.
As an example, he said, a computer programmer may change the clocks on a bank of servers only to realize the servers automatically change the time at the old switchover date. That would throw the computers out by an hour. And then there is the very likely possibility that one server or computer was missed.
"It's not as if you can press one button and all the computers are fixed," he said. "Think of it as if one person on the assembly line did not get the memo."
Mr. Zito noted that California's Oracle Corp. put out an electronic patch or fix-it program some time ago to its U.S. customers for its popular database program.
"And then, they realized that Canada had followed the U.S. lead so they had to put out another one to deal with the different provinces," he says.
(Daylight savings is not universally adopted. Some states, including Arizona, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa do not observe DST. In Canada, residents of Saskatchewan do not change their clocks.)
Mr. Zito, who sells software to make the early conversion easier, also suggests that many European and Asian companies that do not adopt a U.S.-style daylight savings system will have trouble communicating with their counterparts in North America.
In addition, he says organizations such as law firms that use time-stamping for things such as chronicling evidence chains could get caught up in the early switch.
"It could be very, very messy," he warns.
Gartner also has a couple of suggestions for companies being a bit tardy about their conversions.
It suggests to treat DST as a "human-organization problem" - in other words, tell your employees about the changes.
"Ask the director of communications to help the entire workforce become aware of the disparity and avoid being caught off-guard on Monday, March 12th," Gartner said.