[ih] Postel's work history

[Jack Haverty]

Steve - your mention of late quarterly reports reminded me of my first 
encounter with government bureaucracy.

Sometime in the late 1970s, I was PI on some ARPA contract with BBN.  
  Our Finance guy accosted me one day to say that the government was 
refusing to pay a bill because we had not yet submitted our Quarterly 
Technical Report, aka QTR.  I clearly remembered submitting that report, 
on time, after a struggle internally to get everybody involved to write 
their piece.  After some investigation, the ARPA PM (may have been Vint) 
confirmed that ARPA had received the QTR.  But the government still 
refused to pay the bill.

With more investigation, we discovered that all Deliverables had to be 
accompanied by a government form (a "DD-54" IIRC).   The form for our 
QTR had either been forgotten by the BBN bureaucracy or lost in its 
travels through the government bureaucracy.  No DD-54, no Deliverable 
received.  The actual QTR didn't really matter.  Without the DD-54, the 
government withheld payment, but no one seemed able to explain why.

That was my first lesson in how to deal with government bureaucracy - 
just do what the system requires.  I didn't know Jon had worked on the 
Keydata system (if it was actually in use yet at ARPA), or I might have 
called him up and reported a Bug.   I suspect he would have told me it's 
a Feature.

/Jack Haverty

On 11/7/26 06:15, Steve Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> Lyman,
>
> Thanks!  I was about to send a follow up note re Keydata.
>
> The PDP-15 was for a data management system inside DARPA.  It held copies
> of the contracts and management reports.  The system was a one-off system
> developed by Keydata under contract through our office (IPTO).  It was an
> interactive, time-shared system, and the agency director, Steve Lukasik,
> had direct access to it.
>
> Prior to the creation of that system, all of the tracking of contract
> status, expenditures, etc were done through a DoD system at Cameron
> Station, somewhere near the Pentagon.  Paper reports arrived monthly.  In
> addition to changing the timeliness of reports, it also disrupted the flow
> of control.  One day I got a call from the director asking why contractor X
> hadn't submitted any quarterly reports in the last few years.  Prior to the
> creation of the Keydata system, if the director had been interested in past
> quarterly reports, he would have asked someone.  In the process of asking,
> we would have become aware of the situation and we would likely have
> reached out to the contractor with an urgent request/demand for updates.
>
> We had a TIP in the agency, so connecting the PDP-15 as a host was a
> natural step.  And Jon was just the right person to help Keydata add
> support for NCP and Telnet to the Keydata operating system.
>
> Steve
>
>
> Sent by a Verified
>
> sender
>
> On Sat, Nov 7, 2026 at 8:46 AM Lyman Chapin via Internet-history <
> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>
>> A quick search shows that the CV is also online at
>> https://www.postel.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/32/2023/07/postel-cv-1997.txt
>>
>> - Lyman
>>
>>> On Nov 7, 2026, at 8:08 AM, vinton cerf via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>> Can any of you help to recreate Jon Postel's work history?
>>>
>>> UCLA - 1967(?) - 1972 (?)
>>> SRI XXXX-XXXX
>>> <unknown>
>>> USC-ISI XXXX - 1998
>>>
>>> thanks
>>>
>>> vint
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