Daylight Saving: Morocco & Pakistan

Anthony Holmes  23 May 2008 07:14:04 PM

For a long time Australia was the world centre of Daylight Saving confusion. Our six States and two (larger) Territories each have power to set their own rules about Daylight Saving. As a matter of courtesy they talk to each other about possible changes, but that never guarantees consistency between them.

Add to that the confusion that arises from being a Southern Hemisphere country. Even relatively recently it has come as a surprise to some software developers that Summer might happen in December/January/February (I kid you not.)

Anyway: between 1988 and now there have been about 11 DST rule changes in Australia. So we set the standard for changeability.

However: Since the US changed its rules in 2007, there has been a flurry of countries adopting or changing DST rules. Typically politicians the world over announce the changes with relatively short notice and email administrators bang their heads against walls..

Pakistan and Morocco have announced in the last week or two that they will be adopting DST starting on 1st June 2008. That's not a lot of notice.

There are two possible approaches to DST changes: laissez-faire and 'all care'. With the laissez-faire approach, you simply instruct users that meetings may appear wrong (usually wrong in views but seemingly correct inside the meeting documents). And what users should do is open and re-save appointments.

The 'all care' approach is to run agents to adjust appointments: either centrally by an administrator on all mail and resource reservation databases, or initiated by each user.

I believe that IBM is working on a Technote for the Pakistan changes... but there are dependencies on how the OS vendor (mostly Microsoft) applies the changes that must be finished before we can do our work.

In the meantime, you might like to start reading the technotes for the US changes.

Things to remember:
 

• It's necessary, but not sufficient, to apply an Operating System update. Meetings scheduled prior to the OS update that fall during the summer period will then need to be adjusted.
• Views show changes to meeting times following the OS changes, but documents don't change the time they display. Hence, calendar views will be different to calendar documents. Ironically, it's the views (which appear to be wrong) that are trying to adhere to what Notes believes is the user's original intention.  
• Devices (Blackberries, Mobile PC) also need the portable device's OS to be updated with DST
• User communication is important. Encourage users to be aware of the potential for confusion and to act with caution and courtesy
• If you think things are difficult, rest assured: things are at least as complicated, if not more so, in the world of Exchange/Outlook, where a special tool (executable) need to be installed and run to adjust appointments.

And here's the quickest possible summary of what is happening to meetings created before the OS change was applied:

You created a meeting for 10am in Lahore before the DST rules were applied to the OS. Now that you've updated the OS, your meeting appears as 11am in the view and 10am in the calendar document. When you open and resave that 10am appointment, it will change the meeting from 10am Lahore Standard Time to 10am Lahore Daylight Saving Time. The view then changes the display of that meeting from 11am Lahore Daylight Saving Time to 10am Lahore Daylight Saving Time. Which is what you *probably* want.   (The agents do the same thing.)

* If somebody outside Pakistan or Morocco has invited you to a conference call, then it's probably correct for the meeting that originally appeared as 10am to now take place at 11am.

Sidenote: Why Singapore will never adopt Daylight Saving The length of days don't change much on the equator. At its earliest time of the year, the sun rises at 6:47am in Singapore. At its latest, it rises at 7:17am. At its earliest, the sun sets at 6:51pm. At its latest it sets at 7:21pm. The day is so consistent that it never makes sense to apply DST. The longest day is only 30 minutes longer than the shortest one. The further you are from the equator, the greater the benefit you get from Daylight Saving.

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