Future Tense: IT workers scrambling to prepare for early daylight savings time

Today on Future Tense (RealAudio - MP3 - iTunes), I talked with Cameron Haight from Gartner, Inc., who's been following preparations to fix software for the arrival of DST on March 11. I also checked in with a guy who works on the phone and voice mail systems at St. Paul Traveler's Insurance, Will Totten, who's slogged 100 hours patching his systems so far.

Daylight saving time arrives earlier this year, and experts say that could mean trouble from everything to stock trades to airline schedules, from voice mail to Microsoft Outlook.

In 2005, Congress decided that more early evening daylight would translate into energy savings.

Software that runs computers and digital gadgets is set to automatically advance its timekeeping by one hour on the first Sunday in April, not March 11 when daylight savings time kicks in this year.

Across the U.S., information technology workers are bogged down updating their systems.