Daylight Saving Time Change: Risk Assessment

When is daylight saving time? It's on March 11, but be prepared. The upcoming changes for daylight saving time (DST) on March 11 requires all IT organizations to check their infrastructure for compatibility. However, the impact the time change will have on businesses will vary dramatically, according to Gartner, Inc.

"We fear that some high-risk organizations are not well prepared," said Andy Kyte, research vice president and Gartner Fellow. "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. Business applications and calendaring software may not have been written to allow the disparity to be accommodated by hand-tuning and parameter changes. Vendors are offering software patches, but many of these are arriving very close to the event, and even if applied on time, their 'fix' impact on existing schedules will cause secondary confusion."

Gartner has produced a basic risk assessment for daylight saving time. Four broad categories of DST risk profiles include:

Category D - Multinational organizations with operations in many countries, and with customers and suppliers inside and outside of the affected time zones.

Risk assessment: High

These organizations are at significant risk of continuous minor irritations and glitches that will negatively impact IT and business efficiency during the affected period. Businesses in this risk category need to put in place specific additional administrative support in advance of March 11 to manually verify the meeting schedules of managers and knowledge workers, especially where those scheduled meetings are with customers or critical suppliers.

The IT management team should increase the staffing levels of support and help-desk teams for the time change, and should avoid major IT initiatives during the weekend of March 11. These activities should take place under the umbrella of a central DST program office, which should take the lead in developing and implementing a communications program for all associates. Because the daylight saving time glitches will have the biggest negative impact on the most-important business users, the CIO must take an active role in such a program office, and should personally brief the executive management team on potential disruptions and the avoiding actions being taken.

Category C - Organizations that exist wholly within or wholly outside the affected time zones, but where important trading relationships involve connections across the affected time zone boundaries.

Risk assessment: Moderate

For these organizations, management needs to take additional steps to ensure that all scheduled interactions that cross the time zone boundary are double-checked. This includes scheduled international teleconferences, videoconferences, webinars and similar activities. IT management teams should prepare support teams and help desks for a higher-than-average number of calls on March 12 and succeeding days.

Category B - Organizations that exist wholly within the affected time zones (that is, U.S. and Canada) and whose principal customers and suppliers are also wholly within the same zones.

Risk assessment: Low/Moderate

For these organizations, the daylight saving time changes represent a minor IT and business challenge. Most users and trading partners will be fully aware of the time change happening over the weekend, as news media will be providing blanket coverage. IT management teams should ensure that clear communication takes place in advance of the change, that all appropriate patches are applied, and that support and help-desk functions are ready for a small but measurable increase in calls on March 12.

Category A - Organizations that exist wholly outside the affected time zones, and whose principle customers and suppliers are also wholly outside the affected zones.

Risk assessment: Low

For these organizations, the daylight saving time changes represent a minimal minor risk. IT management teams should ensure that support and help-desk personnel are aware of the potential for problems and be ready to deal with a small number of additional calls on March 12.

Additional information is available on the Gartner DST blog on gartner.com at http://blog.gartner.com/blog/index.php?blogid=50. This blog has some of Gartner's most recent analysis and advice around the daylight saving time change. Gartner has also provided DST links from around the Web.

Gartner has also published a series of reports that examine various issues around daylight saving time. These reports, and the most-recent daylight saving time podcast, can be found on Gartner's Web site at
www.gartner.com/research/special_reports/asset_167505_655.jsp.

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