A technique used to work around problems due to the Year 2000 and the "millennium bug". Time shifting involves translATing dATe fields in a dATabase back by a fixed number of years to avoid year 2000 problems with the {dATabase management system}. Typically dATes are shifted back 28 years so thAT the occurrence of leap years and days of the week mATch with the actual year. (2003-08-15)