Springing forward for daylight-saving time will take place three weeks earlier this year, beginning Sunday as part of the Energy Policy Act signed by Congress in 2005.

“Congress passed the law two years ago and gave Americans two years to plan on moving their clocks ahead,” said Gerald Miller, associate director for outreach and extension and associate dean to the College of Agriculture.

Daylight Saving Time, which usually occurs the first Sunday in April, is jumping up three weeks on the calendar to help conserve energy.

It is hoped that by moving DST, people will turn their lights on an hour later and use less energy.

DST will also be extended through the first Sunday in November rather than ending the last Sunday in October like it has in the past.

“The justification for energy conservation is in the bill,” Miller said.

If the extended period doesn’t save enough money, Congress can change back to the old policy, said Jacob Dekkenga, systems support specialist for the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication.

Anticipating disruptions for many computers, places on campus have started to prepare for the time change.

“This is similar to Y2K but not as big of a deal,” said Jim Twetten, assistant director for IT services academic technologies in the Durham Center.

“It [still] affects a lot of things.”

The Durham Center, which provides free computer services to students, is responsible for 2,000 computers on campus – most of which are for faculty or staff.

However, IT personnel in Durham have also been working with individual IT staffs in different departments to assure a clean transition on March 11.

“[We’ve been] working with IT staff in those areas to make sure things are updated and fixed,” Twetten said.

The Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication is one school that has started planning for the important transition and has people working on it currently.

“We’ve updated all of our lab computers and have applied patches from Microsoft and Apple,” Dekkenga said.

The patches are “software ‘fixes'” that tell the computer when DST is,” Dekkenga said.

It has also been Dekkenga’s responsibility to notify Greenlee staff of problems that won’t be resolved right away.

However, faculty and staff aren’t the only ones who will be affected.

Personal laptops may display the wrong date or time.

Twetten encourages students to double-check their calendars during this three-week period.