Hm, I don't think the error is related to a difference in strictness between versions 5.8.0 and 5.8.2.  I just verified that with 5.8.0, the following snippet would have produced the same "bareword not allowed" error that later versions do produce:

use strict;

my $v = DBI::SQL_DATE;   # --> Bareword "DBI::SQL_DATE" not allowed wh
+ile "strict subs" in use
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while this is fine:

use strict;
use DBI;

my $v = DBI::SQL_DATE;
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(because DBI::SQL_DATE is a constant defined in the DBI module)

In other words, I think your problem lies elsewhere. What's a bit weird is that the error is reported to be occurring in Time::Format ... a module dealing with an entirely different (not DBI related) problem domain. I looked at line 265 in the current version of the module: it's an eval { ... } setting up locale info via the module I18N::Langinfo — its possible relatedness to DBI stuff is escaping me at the moment :)

Could you post line 265 (plus some context above and below) of your /usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.8.2/aix-thread-multi/Time/Format.pm file, as well as line 6 (plus context) of NYSDOT/Config/IniFiles.pm?