Understanding the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005

From time to time, legislative changes can impact the definitions of time zones, such as whether a time zone observes daylight saving time and the start or end date for daylight saving time observance. The PeopleSoft system provides updated time zone definitions in the next release following such a legislative change, and new customers as of that release receive the updated time zone data. However, existing customers upgrading to that new release do not receive the benefit of updated time zone data because customer time zone data is not changed during upgrade. In these cases, you can manually modify your time zone definitions to comply with changing rules.

As a specific example, the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed time zone definitions in the U.S. and Canada. PeopleSoft-delivered data in the current PeopleTools release reflects these changes. Depending on your status as a new or existing customer, you might be required to manually update your time zone data:

• If you are a new PeopleTools customer, you have received time zone data that complies with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. You do not have to manually update your time zone definitions.

• If you are an existing PeopleTools customer upgrading to the current release and you already manually updated your time zone definitions to comply with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, your updated time zone data will not be changed during upgrade. You do not have to manually update your time zone definitions again.

• If you are an existing PeopleTools customer upgrading to the current release and you have not updated your time zone definitions to comply with the Energy Policy Act of 2005, your noncompliant time zone data will not be changed during upgrade. You will have to manually update your time zone definitions to comply with the Energy Policy Act of 2005. See the remaining subsections in this section.

As a result of the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005, daylight saving time starts earlier and ends later beginning in 2007. In the U.S. and Canada, daylight saving time now starts the second Sunday in March and ends the first Sunday in November.

To comply with this change, you need to add two new daylight saving time IDs (DST IDs), set your affected time zones to use the new DST IDs, and regenerate your offset data. Depending on your business needs, you may also want to define new time zones and associate them with existing DST IDs.

Separately, you should apply operating system patches according to your vendor’s directions so that file system time stamps will also be in compliance.