Advisory: Tunisia Discontinues Daylight Saving Time in 2009

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The Tunisian press agency reported that Daylight Saving Time(DST) will be discontinued in Tunisia in 2009 due to the fact that the fasting month of Ramadan coincides with the period concerned by summer time. No reports yet as to whether Tunisia will resume DST in 2010.

Tunisians can switch their computers to the “W. Central Africa Standard Time” time zone with a display name of “(GMT+01:00) West Central Africa”. This time zone has a bias of UTC +1 which is Tunisia’s standard time bias and does not observe DST.

Microsoft's product teams are moving to a regular rhythm to update their products and services to reflect these time changes. For each update release, Microsoft accepts change requests at up to a few months prior to the release date. Please refer to Microsoft's Policy in Response to DST/TZ Requests, providing recommendations in order to achieve more seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies. We suggest that governments should provide the following when considering changing DST or making adjustments to time zones:

1.    Ample advance notice (1 year or more) of the planned change.
2.    Official published confirmation of planned changes to DST or time zones.
3.    Concentrated efforts on promoting the change to the affected citizens.

Important notes for governments:

  • Please refer to Microsoft's Policy in Response to DST/TZ Requests. It's important for countries and territories to work towards seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies, providing ample advance notice (of a year or more) with published confirmation of planned changes.
  • We suggest that entities considering the DST changes consider implementing changes at the next clock tick after 01:59:59 rather than at 00:00:00. Making the change at midnight can impact daily systems, such as back ups, financial reports, data pulls or other automated tasks.