Announcement: Changes to daylight saving time in Morocco, earlier than later on September 1, 2008

As I twittered today (geek gasp), I learned today that according to news reports (here, en Francais), the ministry for the Modernization of the public sectors in Morocco just issued a notice that the country will change the clocks back on the midnight between August 31 and September 1, rather than on the original change at midnight between September 27 and September 28 in 2008. (For more on the change, see also the article posted here per the keepers of the international time and date web site.)

“In an official statement, the ministry announced the return to standard time as from September 1st, 2008 as it corresponds to GMT…”

This may present challenges for Moroccan consumers, industries and enterprises, and IT Pros will be inconvenienced independent of the architecture they support. As I noted previously, with little warning or time for customers to react, we could see severe impacts in Morocco and some impacts worldwide. Such a timetable does businesses and infrastructure in Morocco and nearby regions to make the change, nor does it allow the worldwide community to make the needed changes to their systems and infrastructure.

So, what should you do?

Glad you asked.

Of course, less than a week is a tough time to get everyone alerted to this change, similar to something we reported late last year on Argentina (as outlined and posted here).  In order to achieve more seamless transitions to new DST rules and time zones, ample advance notice and concentrated efforts on promoting any change should be provided to the people and businesses impacted.

For now, I recommend that for customers who have applied the August 2008 DST & TZ update, KB951072 to deselect “Automatically adjust clock for DST” in the Date and Time control panel on Sept 1, as noted at right. We’ll have additional guidance published this week.

Tags: Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time, DST, Morocco 

http://tinyurl.com/5mnnen