The early arrival of daylight saving time this year could leave Canada’s financial services community in the lurch if it’s not prepared. The change has prompted a flurry of technological updates and testing among major financial institutions across the country.

DST traditionally begins on the first Sunday in April and ends on the last Sunday in October; but under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, U.S. officials bumped up the start date by three weeks and extended the DST period by a week in a bid to curb energy consumption. As a result, clocks this year will advance by one hour on March 11 and retreat one hour on Nov. 4.

The change is triggering a host of computer-related confusion reminiscent of the Y2K scare on the eve of 2000, when programmers feared that vital computer programs would erroneously interpret the new 2000 date as 1900, wreaking havoc on any industry touched by computer technology.

This time around, the glitch could lead to a one-hour time discrepancy in scores of computer programs, calendaring applications and personal handheld devices such as the BlackBerry, many of which were programmed to reflect the old DST schedule. Failure to make the appropriate adjustments could lead to incorrect time-stamps on major transactions, late appointments and electronic reminders, and inaccuracies in time-sensitive trading data.

It’s not exactly the catastrophic event people were bracing for at the turn of the century, but experts say it would be a mistake to ignore it.

“In a business in which time is of the essence, most people can’t afford to be running an hour off schedule,” says Carmi Levy, senior research analysts at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont.

The time change will have a major impact at Canadian banks, brokerages and mutual fund dealers that rely on various vendors for their operating systems. Most major software companies, including Microsoft Corp., have issued releases warning customers that the new DST schedule isn’t accounted for in a number of their software programs.

The solution lies in a “patch” — a piece of software that’s downloaded in a matter of minutes and is “easy enough for anyone to install,” Levy says. Vendors such as Apple Inc. and Microsoft have been making the patches available free to customers online (see sidebar). BlackBerry users should also apply a patch to their handheld devices in addition to their computers. Otherwise, any information passed between the two devices could be off by an hour.

“Generally speaking, you have to make sure that the operating system that runs on a particular piece of hardware is compliant, because most software takes its time cue from the operating system on which it runs,” says Levy.

Although infotech professionals are bearing the brunt of the technical responsibility associated with the DST change, the boom in telecommuting means employees share some of the load in making sure their personal hardware is up to date.

“Business professionals use a mix of corporate and personal computing devices, and they’re not necessarily accessible to IT people every day, so there’s still a certain degree of responsibility on that individual to understand what’s needed before March 11,” says Alan Hutton, president and CEO of FundServ Inc. and vice chairman of the Canadian Capital Markets Association.

Amir Jafri, vice president of technology at FundServ, says communication is key. Jafri and his team have released an internal memo urging employees to be extra mindful of any appointments scheduled within the extended DST period and to report any glitches as they happen.

Externally, customers who rely on FundServ to process trades will be shut out if they’re running behind the 4 p.m. daily deadline.

To that end, companies such as Richardson Partners Financial Ltd. have been furiously working to ensure all systems are “go” on March 11. Andrew McKinney, director of technical services, says IT professionals call the upcoming time change a “mini-Y2K,” although the term refers to the countless hours of planning and preparation — not an impending technical meltdown.

“Time is an important factor in the inner workings of various software programs, and the best approach is to make sure it’s correct,” he says. “We’ll be watching carefully.”

The major banks are handling the DST change in much the same way. Nimish Patel, senior vice president of enterprise infrastructure at Bank of Montreal in Toronto, says his team has been working on the change for months. Installing a patch is relatively easy, he says, but the challenge lies in co-ordinating the distribution of patches across the desktops of 33,000 employees. “We’re treating this like a major project,” Patel says.

@page_break@BMO sent out an internal memo asking employees to be on the look-out for time discrepancies in their calendaring software and to report any problems. An emergency help desk and e-mail service have been created to respond to any queries.

Of course, it will be impossible to tell how smoothly the transition has gone until March 11 at 2 a.m.

“We’ll be ready and standing by,” Patel says. IE