New Zealand has just recently transitioned into a new Daylight Savings scheme where the start and end rules of the daylight savings period in New Zealand have been extended. The details of this change are here . While this should save us lots daylight so we can now BBQ in the evenings without burning our sausages in the dark like we do in winter. Instead it seems to have cost New Zealand companies by having this change relatively rushed through with little thought or planning to the true implications it has had.

Looking back it seems Mauricio had some really good insight into the potential impacts this change would have in NZ.

I have found the New Zealand DST changes have been particularly well managed and supported by Microsoft with comprehensive notification, information and guidance for customers and partners.

I have found that Java world has faired rather poorly as most people have either assumed that the OS will deal with the change or have not understood that Java manages its own time zone and daylight savings information internally to the JVM. This is made all the harder with soo many different vintages of Java JVMs being used out there. I am sure these items have no doubt caused some surprises this last Sunday and Monday for companies.

Apple Macs seem to have forgotten about this change.

My Tivo managed the DST change well with an updated New Zealand Time Zone file loaded into it.

My new (and otherwise great) Nokia E65 Phone did not manage this change well. My phone still thinks the New Zealand time zone is GMT+12:00 which caused my phone calendar synchronisation with Exchange to push my meetings to be one hour earlier!! Both Nokia and Vodafone New Zealand seem pretty clueless on understanding or correcting this issue. From my point of view either Vodafone need to implement Network Operator time synchronisation or Nokia need to release a time zone patch for the E65. The only work around I have found is to put the phone in the Tonga time zone which is GMT+13:00 during this transition week. Nokia seem to have tried to address this issue for other phones and other country time zone changes but not little NZ. So Vodafone NZ or Nokia if you are reading this - DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!

After all this time zone change fun here are my recommendations:

• To the New Zealand government, more time and publicity should have given to this change. This has definitely had a large impact on New Zealand businesses and some have been unfortunately caught surprised by this.
• Make time zone rule information human editable in all systems to avoid the extreme hassle it causes when it changes in the future. Hey why not even use a standard xml file that has an agreed and standardised schema.
• To the big international companies that have not understood and acted on this New Zealand DST change like Apple and Nokia shame on you I really expected more oh and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.