About Daylight Saving Time changes in 2007

In July 2005, the United States Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PDF), which changes the start and end dates of Daylight Saving Time (DST). Starting in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier on March 11, and will end one week later, on November 4.

The DST changes affect North Carolina, and we need to take them into account when traveling or dealing with systems in other areas of the country. DST does not affect some parts of the United States. In addition, some countries have adopted the DST policy. These include:

All of the United States and Canada except:

  • Arizona
  • Guam
  • Hawaii
  • Puerto Rico
  • U.S. Virgin Islands
  • American Samoa
  • The majority of Saskatchewan
  • Parts of northeastern British Columbia

Mexico will not be following the new Daylight Saving Time rules.

Daylight Saving Time rules vary around the world and are locally determined.

The DST policy affects many information technology (IT) systems. The affected systems page provides specific information regarding Duke systems and applications affected. There is a growing amount of information on the Web about IT DST issues, including information on vendor sites as they address DST issues for their products. In many cases, we will refer you to those sites for detailed information.

The DST issue is not as serious as the Y2K issue we addressed as we approached the year 2000.  If not remedied, computer systems are not likely to fail; they will simply reflect the wrong time. Unless you have safety, health-related or other critical processes that depend upon accurate time of day, your systems may not be severely impacted. In the mildest cases, the worst that might happen is a missed or incorrectly scheduled meeting, an inaccurate time on a printed report, and the like.