TAKING THE REINS: Terry Ansari

Vice president of global business development, CivicLife.com, OttawaAug. 14"The Leap: A Memoir of Love and Madness in the Internet Gold Rush," by Tom Ashbrook. "A great read!"Artist : Frederick HartHobby: Golf, skiingMusic artist: Groove Armada"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking." ?VoltaireMauiHone your ability to think laterally; go with your gut; give dissenting voices the time; own the ultimate decision.Twenty years serving public-sector customers in a number of sales, channels and business management roles with companies such as Oracle, SAP and Microsoft Corp. Most recently at Microsoft, headed all business development and regional management initiatives for the company's national capital office in Ottawa.Before Microsoft, spent five years as a regional director at SAP, where he built the company's presence in Ottawa from scratch and was instrumental in winning a major government of Canada contract to supply the SAP R/3 system across all Canadian federal government departments.CivicLife.com is delivering a citizen-centered civic world that enables personal, real-time interactions between citizens and all of the civic institutions and officials that have a direct impact on their personal lives. That of course, means their federal, state and local governments, but also includes schools, community organizations and even local businesses. As it's driven by where you live, the experience is very localized and personalized, which we believe is what makes it a highly useful and usable offering.One of my most important priorities is engaging the right business partners. Lots of companies have or are talking about having an e-government strategy, but the key thing for us is to find those organizations whose perspective and vision aligns well with ours. Being public-sector focused means that we, pretty much by definition, are and must be focused on the long term and on creating and delivering sustainable value to our customers and partners.Having worked for three of the world's largest software companies [Microsoft, Oracle and SAP], the biggest difference in working with CivicLife.com is simply the fact that we're just beginning the journey. In this role, I'm using all of the disparate skills I've learned elsewhere and am trying to bring that to one place. Our company is chock full of tremendous knowledge and talent, not to mention the fabulous opportunity that's in front of us; the key is to channel it well. The e-government market is still in its very early stages, but as with any part of the technology world these days, this race is going to go the quick and smart, not simply to the big.