Dan Cooper

“My role looks to find ways to improve or simplify our customers' interaction with us, so we can deal with faulty equipment or broken systems and get the business back working again as quickly as possible.

“I also have a responsibility to track whether teams are able keep pace with demand so that we’re able to get advice, kit and training to support the front line as best as we can.

“I always say to people that if a system breaks, I’m fully accountable for the effort to get it working again. If you feel you need to blame somebody over an IT incident, blame me! Tech Support really has some of the most brilliant IT professionals I’ve ever known in my entire career, who all have the drive to diagnose and fix faults as quickly as they possibly can. I’m constantly amazed at how quickly the team is able to resolve the most complex problems.

“As you can probably imagine I do have a lot of meetings – with teams, suppliers, other IT, and senior leaders and with key stakeholders across the business - all generally dealing with trying to get projects, incidents, and requests over the line as fast as we’re able.

“Outside of those meetings, my time is spent responding to emails and Teams messages, though I generally keep time on those restricted so I can crack on with the rest – strategy development, policy and risk management, process analysis, procurement activity, management reporting, audit responses; all those things that tend to keep our business wheels turning.

“I fell into IT really. In 1998, a friend of mine was working in IT and said he could get me a job if I understood a little more about how computers work. So, I bought a computer, learned what I could, got the job in early 1999, and started my professional journey from there.

“I came into Northamptonshire Police from the private sector with the message from my former boss, ‘Don’t be in public sector for more than two years’ ringing in my ears. I started out as a network engineer, then became network manager, then network and comms manager, then went into the regional work for two years and came out as a senior IT manager in 2018, which is, with a couple of changes to the name of the role, where I’ve been ever since.

“Working with the people I do, gives me the motivation to try my best for them and for our customers. I’m very fortunate to have built up some strong friendships inside and outside the department.

“My role gives me the ability to step back and think about what we’re doing and where we could go as a team, which is something I value.

“One of my biggest achievements was delivering the project that modernised the Force’s telephone service which meant that we were the first to use network technology for 999 calls rather than old telephone lines, which was amazing. It saved shed loads of cash, and we became the reference point of how police forces across UK adopted the technology which is now considered standard.

“I’ve been lucky to have been involved in lots of good projects, from installing the first VPN remote access solution in 2008, putting together the COVID response strategy for IT, planning and putting together new comms rooms to refreshing FCR core systems, rolling out loads of network and firewall tech, and building business cases for M365 and cloud services. I’m fortunate to have played a small part in lots of cool stuff - well, I think it’s cool stuff anyway 😂!

“One interaction early on in my managerial career with the Force was a conversation I had with now retired Superintendent Bob Smart in 2009. He said, “Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than seek permission, things change quicker that way.” Which I took as, don’t over-analyse, make the decision based on the information to hand and then own it. I’ve tended to live by that.

“This job is difficult when I need to manage down customers’ expectations and give them bad news, like when other IT issues are taking priority to fix over theirs. Tech Support deal with 2,500 requests every month, some big, some small, as well as project and replacement work, and sometimes it’s just not possible to deal with all the issues as quickly as we’d like.

“I would imagine people expect I’d face lots of challenges in my role, from major system outages, upset customers, failing suppliers or breaking hardware – which I do deal with virtually every day - but I tend to see them as opportunities we can learn from and improve the service we provide.

“I often recall times I’ve spent in the control room on Friday or Saturday nights or been working in custody or gone out with a response crew as times that really opened my eyes to what police do and why they do it. In more recent years seeing the explosion of forensic digital investigation and intelligence work has hugely changed my view on the increasing breadth of work the police have to take on, day in day out.

“I have a huge admiration for those recruits who volunteer to be PAVA sprayed as part of the training, something we regularly saw when we worked out of Wootton Hall. I’m sure I wouldn’t volunteer given the chance, particularly having seen the results close up!

“Outside of all the technical bits and bobs I’ve picked up over the years, I’ve also learnt that getting to understand people and teams and how they work is crucial from customer and team management perspectives. I’ve learned that people’s unhappiness is not – usually - about me personally, more about their frustrations at why things aren’t working for them. From that I’ve learned to live in the moment, it’s too easy to stress about everything that could go wrong, especially when under pressure, and that it’s much better to harness that energy into finding ways to solve the problem at hand.”