On 2026-10-04 12:27, James Bellaire via tz wrote:
On 10/4/2026 12:57 PM, Kim Davies via tz wrote:
Quoting Mark Davis (U) via tz on Saturday October 03, 2026:
We've discussed in Unicode about putting up a page with a similar warning. I
would encourage an IANA web page on the topic. While the TZDB is unknown to
many people, a page would provide a place for others to link to.
There is no doubt more we can do here, and I think there is merit in
a dedicated straightforward resource that provides a step-by-step for
policy makers. We've done a mix of presentations, engagements and
articles on the topics, e.g. in 2023:
Because of this propagation time, it is crucial that policymakers
provide a year or more advance notice to IANA before changes to their
time zone policies take effect. Without this lead time it is almost
guaranteed there will be great confusion caused by the use of
inconsistently distributed time zone data.
I understand the ask for a year's notice but the list of changes made where a
year's notice was given is very short.
In the US, the Cruz amendment to the current "Sunshine Protection Act" sets the
effective date two years out from enactment (which will need to be modified if
enacted in November or December before the bill dies). The 2021 version had an
effective date of November 2023 when it passed the Senate in March 2022. So at
least the senate committee has received the message on giving advance notice.
The effective 2007 change in dates for DST was enacted in 2005. The effective
1987 change to the beginning date for DST was enacted in July 1986.
I am not sure how well the public in Canada would have taken it if all of this
year's changes were proclaimed effective March 2027 instead of immediately. The
end users didn't want to wait a year for the change.
AFAICT those were premier, party, or government led initiatives, with their
elections approaching, possibly wanting to appear show strengthm to their peers,
voters, others out E, and someone down S! ;^p
Perhaps the presentation can include illustrations (without insulting specific
policymakers) of where short notice caused a problem?
With that said I think the key is identifying the right forums to share this
work so it actually makes a useful impact. The nature of the work we do at IANA
and broadly within ICANN tends to be more with national governments. With the
recent changes in Canada it seems this is being more driven at a provincial
level, and there is probably not a good nexus there to reach the right people.
So, where can we spread the message to help it resonate? Is there any place
where the message could help make an impactful difference to policymaking?
Perhaps through the ITU? While there is no international approval required for a
country to change their time zones, educating the right agencies in each country
might help the decision makers in their countries. (Although with local politics
the decision makers may still decide to ignore the technical hurdles.)
Have they yet recognized that most of the world runs on tech they ignore, and it
ignores them back?
I am not sure how much they or the national telecomms or standards agencies
would care about times or zones, except at levels where multiple zones are
involved, nationally across North America, wide South American countries,
someone at the EU level; tropical and Asian countries mostly don't use DST or
have multiple zones.
I think perhaps IATA is the closest linked to us (thru SSIM schedules, notice
periods, standards, and notices) and best placed agency to reach the travel
industry, transport utilities, regulators, and legislators, if we can get some
cooperation, possibly also involving their government related counterpart ICAO,
to document and illustrate the impacts, losses, and penalties when the
passengers, staff, and crew devices, and business systems, are not on the same
local times as airline and airport systems, with illustrations from short
notice, high impact events like Egypt's fiasco, without mentioning anyone
explicitly!
--
Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada
La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved
non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add
mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retrancher but when there is no more to cut
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
