Because of that short shelf-life, the daylight-saving time (DST) changeover at 2 a.m. Sunday means that computer systems at the American Red Cross, which collects, stores and distributes much of the U.S. blood supply, must have its timestamps and other time-related programming updated without any hitches.
Any problems with the time change could affect the use of collected blood platelets, an issue that the Washington-based Red Cross has been working feverishly to prevent.
To make sure its systems work properly through the weekend and beyond, the non-profit agency has been grappling with the DST issue since late last year. It's not alone. Organizations and companies across the U.S. to prepare for the DST switch. The time change used to take place on the first weekend in April; it is starting three weeks early this year because of changes in federal law aimed at energy savings.
At the same time, vendors patches and software updates to head off potential problems.
Every time the American Red Cross gets a blood donation, it is labeled and tracked by a date-and-time stamp created when it is collected, according to the agency. That stamp is an important part of the blood management process because after blood is collected it's separated into different components for different medical needs. Red blood cells, platelets and plasma all have different shelf lives. Platelets only last five days, while red blood cells have a 42-day life span. Plasma can be frozen for up to a year. The time stamp information is critical because it tells blood banks the finite shelf life for each product, according to the agency.
In the midst of preparing for DST, the Red Cross on Jan. 16 brought in a new chief technology officer, Nida Davis Roemer. Davis previously worked at the Federal Reserve Information Technology office in Richmond, Va., where she served as an assistant vice president and chief architect. Her first major task at the Red Cross: the time change.
With an internal DST readiness assessment in hand, Roemer and her IT team dove into the project, identifying six core applications and another 50 related mission-critical apps that had to be updated. The Red Cross has some 200 applications in use, and of those 158 needed some kind of remediaton.
The six core applications include a national blood computer system and programs the Red Cross uses to collect blood testing results, maintain records for blood drive donations, conduct case management in times of disasters and run its e-mail systems.
To accomplish its goal, a team of 16 people was created, including a specialist in system architecture, a lead engineer, a project manager and a risk management officer to help oversee every detail of the work. Communication was key: The team met twice a week to review progress, while Roemer met with the project manager every morning for updates and spoke with the team members by phone at the end of each workday. "This was very helpful because of the level of complexity of the project," Roemer said.
With a wide assortment of hardware, software, testing, compatibility issues and interdependencies to review and update, the core team and the rest of the Red Cross' 600 IT staffers had plenty to track and accomplish, she said. Some of them occasionally slept in the agency's data center while working nights and weekends.
The biggest challenges involved updating e-mail servers and Java Runtime Environment (JRE) applications. The JRE applications were complicated "because there are so many different versions" that have to be addressed and updated, Roemer said. And when workers went to fix the agency's 168 e-mail servers, which run Microsoft Exchange 2003, updates for 162 of the machines went well. But the last six had problems that are still being investigated.
"We had mixed results," Roemer said.
To communicate with the agency's35,000 employees and one million volunteers, a Microsoft SharePoint Web portal site was created to provide information about DST, including tutorials on how users could update their own systems in local offices. "People were able to get the information and use it and integrate it," Roemer said.
Another important tool was the use of an Excel spreadsheet nicknamed "The Dig," Roemer said. "The Dig" provided a view of every server by name, number and location, and listed every operating system, database, application, piece of hardware and interdependencies. "Every component that we needed to take care of was on the Dig list," she said.
Two weeks ago, with the DST deadline approaching, the IT team was forced to bring in additional people from other areas to get compliance work done -- or face the prospect of shutting applications down during production times. That was not an option, Roemer said. "It was a flurry of activities over the past two weeks. We are almost there. March 11, we will be almost done," except for some minor work that can be completed after the changeover occurs.
By last weekend, the Red Cross IT staff had completed updates for its Blackberry and e-mail servers, she said, finishing up two important cogs in the DST process.
During the time change early Sunday, the Red Cross plans to have extra IT workers available to handle any problems. Extra staffers will be on hand afterward, as well, to deal with any issues that pop up later.
The changeover this weekend doesn't end the agency's work. The Red Cross also created a mobilization plan to help it deal with the change back to standard time that will occur on Nov. 4. "It will be a regular IT item for us to track for future DST changes. A lot of the challenges we found this time are not going to be there" in November, she said.