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About coordination of changes in time zones

tz map


Do you know what Turkey, Chile, Russia, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, North Korea and Haiti have in common? Chaos in the management of time zones .


No, this is not a joke. In fact, this is quite a serious problem. The worst thing about temporary zones is not that they exist at all, and not even summer time. Worst of all, they often change all of a sudden. Let me explain.


Firstly, from a global point of view, it may seem that time zones should be managed by some relatively neutral international body, such as ITU (International Telecommunication Union, UN branch) or, possibly, IAU (International Astronomical Union). However, in reality, every time zone in the world is managed locally.


This is not a problem in itself. I fully agree that countries within their borders should be able to do whatever they want with time. But the fact of the matter is that once again we face the same problem: the zones change without proper notification . All those countries listed earlier, along with many others, have recently done just that.


It is very important that before making changes to their time zones or daylight saving time rules, governments of governments should leave enough time for updates for the IT industry. They must take into account the amount of work that people must do to verify changes, create an update, test it, and then publish and distribute it. In addition, you need to keep in mind that end users do not always update their systems immediately. The usual thing is when a user gets a time zone update after weeks, or even months after publication.


Case Study - Turkey


As an example, take a look at Turkey. In 2015, the government decided that it would be a good idea to postpone the end of summer time by two weeks to give people more bright time to vote during the election period. They moved the end of summer time from October 25 to November 8.


The first rumors about this appeared in an unofficial news article on September 8, about 6 weeks before the proposed change. This article was not noticed by the TZ community (note the lane: meaning the community involved in time zones; these are just people, volunteers united by interest; this term will be used later, I didn’t come up with any other good translation) until September 19th. It is difficult to build on news alone, for they often contain incorrect information or are confused in details. A few words of the official to the journalist are simply not enough.


On September 29, the government news agency also announced a change . It was still not completely official, for it was not accompanied by a reference to any decree or law. But that was enough to convince the TZ community that this could really happen, after which a change to the IANA time zones database was initiated, and an update was released a few days later, on October 1 .


Finally, on October 4, an official announcement was issued in the government bulletin . About three weeks before the change takes effect.


Many representatives of the IT industry, including major players such as Apple, Google and Oracle, have taken data from IANA and published it through their own channels. For example, Apple released an update with zone changes for the iPhone and iPad along with an iOS 9.1 update on October 21, leaving users only three days to install this update and avoid confusion over time.


For Microsoft Windows, which updates the time zones somewhat differently and requires a higher level of confirmation of changes, an announcement was made on October 9 , and an update was released on October 20 .


In some cases, the day of the change was missed. For example, this happened to pytz , the popular temporary zone library for Python, which update 2015.7 was only published on October 26th.


And what happened in the end? BBC quote :


The bewildered Turks ask “what time is it?” After the clock on electronic devices ignored the government’s decision to postpone the seasonal change of time.

Or here are the messages from IBT :


Millions of Turks woke up in the morning in confusion, as smartphones, tablets and computers automatically moved the clock like other countries in the Eastern European time zone, despite the fact that Turkey postponed the clock one hour ago for two weeks.

The effect of this, apparently, was the opposite of what was expected. But in general, the government should be more visible, because practically the same nonsense happened a year earlier!


According to IBNA reports in 2014 :


An incredible confusion for 52.9 million Turkish voters turned out to be the decision of the authorities to postpone a day ahead of the day. The reason why the daylight saving time was postponed, according to the Erdogan government, was the desire to improve the election process, but no one thought about the “new technology” factor. All smartphones of Turkish citizens automatically changed the time, and as a result, thousands of voters came to the polls too early and waited another hour to vote.
The same thing happened with computers that did not download the new software version. Problems also arose in the baggage delivery system at Istanbul Airport: the system automatically transferred time, ignoring government plans, which ultimately led to a huge delay in baggage pickup for passengers. In addition, there were problems with many flights due to the fact that passengers confused the time of departure.

What about the rest of the world?


Not only Turkey does not learn from its mistakes, other countries of the world have attacked the same rake more than once. Remember the list at the beginning of the post? Let's take a little more detail:



Other coordination problems


All of the above cases have arisen with a certain degree of surprise, however there are places on the planet where they are not at all concerned about the normal timetable for daylight saving time.


One of these places is Fiji. Daylight saving time has been running there since 2009. However, every year the government makes an announcement about when summer time will begin and when it will end. Each year, these dates are different, and each time until the last moment it is not clear when the authorities will make a decision or what to do if they do not announce it. It would be much easier if they accepted a permanent schedule, and an announcement was made only in case of deviations from this schedule.


Another such place is Morocco, where the timetable for the start and end of summer time is normally defined, but every year since 2012, there is a “summer time stop” period, when summer time ends before the start of Ramadan and begins a little later. This means not only translating the clock four times during the calendar year , but also that no one has any idea when the second and third transitions will take place until the authorities make the announcement. This is partly justified by the fact that the dates of Ramadan are tied to the observed new moon. However, I personally believe that they should fix the transition to summer time, even if it begins before Ramadan and ends after. The unpredictability of dates leads to the fact that it becomes too difficult to know the time in Morocco if you are not in Morocco. (By the way, Egypt practiced the same thing, but only in 2010 and 2014.)


Recommendations to governments


First of all, I must emphasize that these are my personal recommendations. I do not speak on behalf of my government, my employer, or the TZ community. These recommendations are based on many years of experience with time zones and observations of what is happening.


If you are going to make a change in your time zone or zones, whether it is a change in offset from UTC, or accepting or canceling daylight saving time, or changing the start and end dates of summer time, please do the following:



Following these rules ensures that your change reaches the IT industry, including computers, mobile phones and other devices.


Recommendations to software developers



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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/282550/

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