TINKER AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. -
However, if Steve Mooney forgets to update the time on the credit union's networks, systems, and applications here, the extension of daylight time this year could put a monkey wrench in Tinker's operations.
"Consider accrual dollar amounts on large sums of money that could potentially cost a member if our systems are off by a couple of hours," said Mooney, vice president, information services operations, at $1.4-billion Tinker FCU.
Beginning in 2007, daylight-saving time will start the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday of November, in line with an energy bill Congress passed in August 2005.
"Additionally, accounting systems do not respond well to times being off," said Mooney. "That could cause interrupts in daily processing."
Phone systems are also at risk, according to Alan Denson, senior project manager at $7-billion BECU in Seattle.
"We are also paying close attention to our phone systems, and how they integrate with our voicemail and e-mail," said Denson. "File transfer processes between BECU and outside partners can be impacted as well."
Both Tinker and BECU are expecting their third party service providers to get on the ball with the change in daylight time this year.
"We are already visiting with our vendors to ensure they are making the same updates, patches and upgrades," Mooney said.
"Something as simple as two systems having conflicting clocks can fail a file transmission and would require extra work to resolve," Denson explained.
Mooney and Denson said that it's not wise to assume that third parties will make the necessary changes.
Brian Warfel, senior vice president at $361-million Power Financial CU and chair of the Executive Committee of the CUNA Technology Council, agreed: "I don't really know how seriously electronic companies will take this."
The Tinker technology team started preparing late last month for this year's change and plans to be ready by March 4, one week before the switch, Mooney continued.
"We are currently upgrading our entire Cisco Networking Infrastructure and our Cisco VoIP Phone Systems," he said. "We have completed our Microsoft Infrastructure, along with our Host Processing environment, and lastly we will be addressing applications."
Whereas updates to the Tinker core system will be manual, management tools will automatically send patches to network servers, desktops and the Cisco systems.
Meanwhile, BECU has established a review team, which is currently taking stock of its systems that need updates, such as the core system, and contacting vendors.
"A lot of rework and confusion will be avoided by taking action now," said Denson.
"We are watching progress closely to make certain that the systems are well tested prior to being pressed into service," he said. "Most applications with time stamps or calendar functions use a centralized clock or the local PC or server time clock, all of which have required an operating system patch. We have a great set of management tools that can deploy patches quickly."
Even when March 11 has successfully passed, BECU will continue to keep an eye out as the long-established daylight-saving time dates roll around in April and October.
In any case, the daylight time extension won't cause problems of epic proportions, Warfel said.
"It is only a one-hour time difference and that won't be a huge deal," he said.
"We do not expect any business function to fail or even have serious problems," said Denson.
"This is not like the Y2K situation where date fields were actually incorrect," Mooney added.
FOR MORE DETAILS
* BECU, www.becu.org
* Power Financial CU, www.powerfi.org
* Tinker FCU, www.tinkerfcu.org
* CUNA Technology Council, www.cunatechnologycouncil.org
* Microsoft Daylight Saving Time Help and Support Center, http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp-dst
