Friday, May 24, 2013

The Problem With Philippine Standard Time


A new law setting the Philippine Standard Time has been signed by President Benigno Aquino III last May 15. The law, known as The Philippine Standard Time (PST) Act of 2013 is a consolidation of Senate Bill No. 3284 and House Bill No. 164 which was passed by the Senate and House of Representatives last February 4. Aside from setting the Philippine Standard Time, the new law assigns the first week of the year as the "National Time Consciousness Week".

This means that all national and local government offices is mandated to display the Philippine Standard Time on their official time devices, bundy clocks included. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) is tasked to be the official time source and will maintain the time standard. All government offices shall coordinate with Pagasa at least once a month to synchronize their official time devices.

I checked the website of DOST to see what the official time is, and this is what I got:

Philippine Standard Time Pagasa Difference
Time difference at around two and a half minutes (click to enlarge)


Since it's just a minimal difference, I thought I would look around for the Pagasa timeserver. However, I came across this one: http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/wb/timeserver.html


Philippine Standard Time Pagasa
Uhm, I'm pretty sure its still morning (click to enlarge)


Anyway, growing pains. The law will take effect after 15 days its publication in Official Gazette / 2 newspapers of general circulation, so maybe we should just wait.

* I found the official time of UP, synchronized with other time servers in the world. http://time.upd.edu.ph/


No comments:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...