Some companies are using my name, with stolen signature and passport images to add credibility to their attempts to defraud people. I am CEO of Pacio Core Ltd of Saint Lucia and am not associated with any other company. If you see any use of my identity other than in regard to Pacio Core Ltd, it will be fraudulent. Please avoid being misled by any such identity use, and kindly let me know about this criminal activity via the Contact section below, thank you.
The David Hartley adventure has encompassed civil engineering, software for the Accounting Profession, and now Triple Entry Accounting (TEA) using blockchain technology to replace the 600 year old Double Entry Accounting (DEA) system which is past its use by date, while living in thirteen countries, some multiple times, as I moved around the world. The current stay of 9 years and ongoing in Saint Lucia in the Caribbean is the longest stay in one country since my Australian childhood to University years.
After starting professional life as a civil engineer in Australia with the Brisbane City Council in 1966, my serious computing started in Namibia (then South West Africa), Africa, in 1969 with the mathematical modelling of a large river basin using 100 years of rainfall data that I hand punched up on punch cards. To get the job done on the computer then available, an ICT 1500, I had to get into the guts of the Fortran compiler - great fun.
Back in Australia after a period working with a consulting civil engineering firm, I decided that the computing was more interesting than the engineering, and so started Hartley Computer in 1974, to supply software to engineers, but that soon pivoted to developing software for the Accounting Profession, as Accountants needed computing but were not into doing it themselves as engineers then tended to be. My colleagues and I developed HAPAS (HArtley Professional Accountants’ System and SHEILA (System by Hartley for Entirely Integrated Ledger Accounting), plus associated systems, ultimately including hardware (the 3900) and an operating system too - RT86, a true pre-emptive multi user multi tasking operating system for the 8086 chip, launched in 1980, 15 years before Windows PCs had that capability.
Hartley Computer was one of the first mini/PC computer vertical market successes in the world, with ultimately 250 staff and 3,000 sites in 7 countries. In the process I became known as “the father of computer client accounting”.
Unfortunately the huge potential of Hartley Computer went badly wrong by 1982 in a complicated saga involving hubris, corruption, crime (hitman threats, a bottom of the harbour gangster, kneecapping talk, burnt car ...), a messy divorce, strikes, fundraising difficulties, and corruption induced receivership. The death of Hartley Computer affected me greatly and was a significant loss to Australia too. This first hand experience of the devastating cost of corruption is part of the reason for my current passion in fighting corruption everywhere via Pacio and Triple Entry Accounting. Some more of the story is given in the following Australian Computing History section.
In that fateful year of 1982 I gave the ACS inaugural address, keynote address in Hobart, the first Australian to ever do so at the ACS conference. This was also the time of the famous quote by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore that Australians were heading in the direction of being the poor white trash of the Pacific. And that's indeed how it looked at the time. I repeated that phrase in my speech, generating some controversy.
Then from 1985 there was Banksia Information Technology (BIT) in Hong Kong which designed and manufactured award winning IT gear (PCs, modems, and the a voice activated fax/phone switch we called PHAXswitch), and inevitably it seems more drama linked to the Tienanmen Square events of 1989. All good for the book one day!
And so to the UK in 1993 via New Zealand, with HAPAS Mark II, named Hartley.Accountant. By 1998, my partners and I in Hartley Computer UK had gained 1,000 Accounting Practice Clients ranging from sole practitioners to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
But in 1999, my then wife Caramia (number four ahem) was diagnosed with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis (PPMS). My partners and I sold Hartley Computer to Sage PLC, so that Caramia and I could move to sunnier Antigua in the Caribbean, which Caramia thought would help her by boosting Vitamin D production, as it did. Caramia beat the MS with the help of sun and D but died from cancer in 2015 because of her addiction to sugar.
The adventure in Antigua plus a period back in Australia from 2012 to 2016 covered various online projects including researching and prototyping ideas for post XBRL financial data storage and reporting (Standardised Semantic Information Model), and blockchain study - back to school at 72! - all now part of Pacio.
A necessary part of the plans is staying fit and healthy for a long time, involving eating well, exercising, sun for Vitamin D, taking my supplements (no meds, no doctors), and taking advantage of the extreme life extension options becoming available thanks to the fantastic longevity advances in progress, in order to be able to stay the course in a fit and healthy state.
Part of the history is told in an Australian Computer Society Heritage Project chapter, though that contains some factual errors. A more complete version of the story is given in this University of Sydney and Pearcey Foundation Oral History Interview in 2020, especially in the Interview Transcript from page 3. (I was admitted to the Pearcey Hall of Fame in 2003 in recognition of Hartley Computer's contribution to Australian Computing. Oh that it was not beheaded in 1982...)
Some of the story is also told in oral form in two Australian Computer Museum Society 2021 interview podcasts available here: The rise of Hartley Computer and The demise of Hartley Computer and new beginnings with Pacio.
Pacio, my current venture, is a Saint Lucia (Caribbean) company aiming to convert the world from the corruption and fraud prone inefficient 600 year old Double Entry Accounting system to Triple Entry Accounting (TEA). The market need is $36 Trillion (with a T) huge as described in our documents. TEA by Pacio could make a very significant contribution to improving the world, while generating thousands of percent returns for investors. The Pacio Info pdf gives a one page Executive Summary, and provides links for more details if interested.
Copyright © 2010-2026 David Hartley
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