ELITE magazine interview with We Telecom Chairman, Dr. Magued Osman

·         Equal access to education and infrastructure for the poor is the first steps towards real social justice

·         January 25th was undoubtedly an inspiring revolution, but it taught us that change has many diverse ways beside protests

·         Without public opinion polls, there are no precise decisions

·         The Egyptian state is moving in the right direction, but slowly, and it must accelerate its steps

Cairo: Ramy Magdy, Caroline Sherief, Rana Doss, Nermine Tawfik, Sherry Asaad, Omar Alaa.

·         How did your relationship with the Faculty of Economic and Political Science begin and why did you choose to study in it?

-          During my high school, I was in the science section  and wanted to join the faculty of Engineering, however, my dad's friend advised me to join the department of Statistics in the faculty of Economics and Political Science because it is a new and unique major, so it had a bright future. When the results came out, I got a very high score that qualified me for the top faculties like Medicine and Engineering but I preferred to join Faculty of Economics and Political Science to enroll in the department of Statistics because I really loved Mathematics.

·         Few people major in Statistics, and even fewer of the graduates of this major are interested in pursuing a career in public service, tell us what did studying Statistics add to your character and how does it affect any person?

-          Upon my graduation, I wasn't hired as a teaching assistant right away, I first worked in the Arab League of States, in the Statistics management of the organization, and because I am fluent in French I was transferred to work in the Arabic-European dialogue department in the Arab League, in which I kept working for 5 years, during this period I got my Master's degree and was hired as a teaching assistant in the faculty, in addition to that, I was the head of the demographic center for a year. I think that the years I spent in the Arab League, broadened my horizons and ignited my interest in the public affairs not just being a Statistician.

The turning point for me, was when I started working in the information center for the Council of Ministers, that is when I became very interested in the public affairs and how to connect Statistics with the decision making process, where the decisions should be supported with data, this is clear in the name of the unit itself which is the "The Council Of Minister's Information and Decision Support Centre," where I found that many decisions weren't supported by the required data either because of the lack of the data itself or from the lack of analysts for these data, and that is what I opted to achieve, because I believe that without depending on data, the decisions will never be accurate, so during my time in the center, I established a unit for conducting surveys through the telephone.

I worked as a Minister for a while, then returned to teaching and used my experience to connect between Statistics and the real world.

The importance of Statistical indicators stems from how their display of Public Opinion specially when they're conducted professionally and neutrally, which is admittedly a very big obstacle ahead of Survey centers in the Arab World that are under the auspices of governments, in which negative results are not welcomed, and as a result, I see that it is better for these centers to be independent from the government and it is important that the information gathered should be disseminated as the monopoly of these information is an obstacle to development.

·         Lately, your name has been linked to Baseera (The Egyptian Public Opinion Research Center)talk to us more about Baseera and what you aim to achieve through this institution?

-          The idea behind Baseera has been on my mind since my time in the Information Center, I thought that upon my retirement, I would establish an independent survey center, and so, I followed up with many survey centers in the West before I started up Baseera with 11 of my colleagues from the Academia and other businessmen. We established the center as a corporate and not as an organization, in April 2012, and the time of the first presidential elections after the revolution, and so we started conducting surveys through the telephone about the presidential candidates, at the time, Ahram Newspaper was our only competitor in conducting surveys to the people, but then Al-Masry Al-Youm Newspaper asked for the results exclusively  and so they posted the results in the paper where Ahmed Shafik got 20% of the favor of the population, after him AbdelMoneimAboelFotoh with 19%, HamdeinSabahy got 15% of the favor of the population, and the remaining 33% answered that they didn’t settle on which candidate to vote for, and so Al-Masry Al-Youm announced that Ahmed Shafik was the most favored candidate to win the presidential election, not taking into consideration the majority of the population who haven't decided who to vote for, this miscalculation affected the view of the people about the survey center, when Mohamed Morsi got the most votes and was in the second round of election against Ahmed Shafik especially that the Muslim Brotherhood played a smart strategy with the spread of supporters for their candidate all over the country.

If we look into the cases of countries with a history in survey centers like the United States of America, more recently in the 2016 elections between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, we see that Clinton's campaign used the media to influence pollsters and shamed Trump voters to announce their intentions to vote for him, which made the final election win completely different from that predicted by pollsters that favored the win of Hillary Clinton.

At the same time, the results of surveys are eye opening to the government, as they are different from the view of the public, for that, I contacted Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif with the survey results and he presented them in front of the Council of Ministers, that is why at the time when Ahmed Shafik was the Minister of Aviation he used the survey results that I gathered to help him in his work, and he nominated me to be the Minister of Communication after the 2011 revolution.

I wanted Baseera to introduce information to the public and not just to be contained to investigations, so we started to work on a project called: "A number in our lives," where a number that is related to a fact in the political, economic, or even sports realm, to be sent via the mail where we reached 40,000 subscribers on the email free service and also via the SMS as a paid service, reaching 50,000 subscribers, we have currently expanded the reach of "A number in our lives," to 8 Arab countries.

In addition to this project we also launched a smart phone application called: "Nes'allak," where citizens can access the results of some surveys and at the same time they can answer some questions. I hope that we can expand our reach to all the Arab Worldas I thought we should train academics to conduct surveys in Arab States specially in the case of the latest protests in Algeria and Sudan, where I established a survey center in Sudan called "Idrak," that succeeded there and is considered an important step to strengthen the communication and the diplomatic relations between Egypt and Sudan.

·         Egypt Telecommunications or "We," is the biggest communication company in Egypt, how do you evaluate its entrance into the mobile networks market and what can this company add to its information technology?

-          Egypt Telecommunications is a state-run company and it is the first company that introduced the land line in Egypt, and in the 90s during the economic reformation it turned from being a public company to offering 20% of its bonds in the stock exchange market, with 80% of its bonds to the state, and from my point of view, the company is achieving a very good job as it is the second public company in achieving revenues after the Suez Canal Bank, and on getting a mobile networks license, this opened the path for the other networks to offer land line services, which led to a complete competition between the communication companies which benefits the country.

From my point of view, Egypt telecommunications is a successful experience, where it is filled with important cadres, with a board that consists of very important figures of the society, and so it is a very crucial experience in the communication field, especially when it is the only Egyptian mobile network in the market where the other three companies are foreign.

As a matter of fact, Communication industry is essential to national security, where it would be more convenient that a national network company that runs the important government information instead of a foreign company, in addition to that, the national communication companies play an important role in the developmental processes primarily through the internet, like in the education field, the industrial and investment fields and so, the mobile network company has an added value through its development of the infrastructure by spreading internet services to all the country, opposed to foreign companies that leave if they don't get profit.

·         You always call for the importance of Freedom of Information Access, how can this freedom be maintained with a governmental company in the landline market, the internet market and a strong competitor in the mobile network market?

-          If we look at the constitution, we will find that it guarantees the right to citizen ownership of information, so we must view the ownership of information as a principal more than it is a tool.

·         We are celebrating the ninth anniversary of the revolution this month, how do you evaluate the January revolution and its outcomes?

-          At the beginning, the revolution was very inspirational and fascinating both inside and outside of Egypt, but after a while other agendas started to override the revolution and so we can learn from this experience, is that any revolution should have a solid thought to abide by so that other factions wouldn't take over it.

Nevertheless, the revolution had many positive outcomes, where it proved that there is no one who can get through his wrongful deeds regardless of his history like what happened to former president Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, it also encouraged the freedom of expression for individuals and also was a reason to our current constitution, but it is also important to note that people should understand that there are other ways to reach change other than protests, as revolutions have high costs.

·         What is your evaluation for the population crisis after the recent decrease in the degree of population growth?

-          The Egyptian Population increased by 40% from 2006 to 2012, and to state that the population growth had decreased should could be valid when on growth rate returns to be equal to the rate before 2006, other than the that, the decrease in the population growth rate is small, because the growth in the population this year reached 2 and a half million people and this rate can be managed to be only 2 million people, then it would be considered to be a breakthrough in itself, I've written many articles in this regard titled, "Collective Suicide," as I think that the issue is not dealt with seriously where each ministry blames the other for the proliferation of the problem.

·         Building on the previous point, there has been talks about the negative social side effects of the reform programregarding the middle class and poverty rates, what is your opinion about this?

-          The economic reform program is an important step, and it should've been pursued many years ago, that is why the costs are this high, which we see in the short term, but its benefits will be visible in the long and medium terms, the costs of the economic reform program was faced in the whole world, with the lower class suffering the most of these costs, especially with policies of lifting subsidies from the petrol prices, that mostly benefited the rich, where the government had benefited a lot of money that was spent on the rich class, and tries to reallocate the subsidies in order tobenefit the poor, but this process needs more focus on treating other aspects, and so although poverty rates are expected to rise in the short term but it will have fruits in the medium and long terms.

·         You have developed a new social justice index in which Egypt has scored 2.28 out of 10; tell us more about this index.

-          The social justice index measures to what extent are their equal opportunities available for all citizens especially those with disabilities, the ratios also show that most of the beneficiaries of the free university education system are from the top class, and so there should be other systems that are targeted to support the poorer families in order to achieve real social justice these systems will be most effective in the education field, and also in the internet infrastructure, where providing fast internet access to Egyptian villages will make it possible for the locals to better advertise for their products online, which will raise their status, also we should work more on the health sector that is mainly used by higher classes in the society.

·         You are known for your support of women, whether it is by your membership in the National Council for Women or by the focus of Baseera in women related issues, howdo you describe the status of the Women in Egypt in the current time?

-          In the current time, there is no education gap between the genders in Egypt, which is great, nevertheless,the bigger problem is related to employment opportunities ahead of Women where men are preferred over women in getting jobs because of Women's conditions of related to housework especially that all the statistics show that the working woman gives the same amount of attention to her house as any other housewife, and so the working woman needs more facilities to help her balance between her career and her house, like the availability of nurseries near her house. There is a study by the World Bank that calculates the negative effects of gender inequality in employment, and Egypt ranks at 29 in gender inequality which is a sign of the cultural aspect of this inequality.

In the political realm, however, Women has gained more privileges as the number of women ministers increased and are holding very important cases at hand, we can say that the state is walking in the right path but is walking slowly, and should walk faster.

·         How do you evaluate the inner political situation especially in the midst of the growing tensions in the region?

-          The political situation is enhancing but in a slow pace, and for that we should walk with better performance to reverse the past corruptions, where the situation in the past few years has been better than the past 5 years. Looking at the regional situation, it can be described as being very complicated, and it poses a direct threat to Egypt especially in the middle of opting for an economic reformation.

·         Finally, what is your advice for the students of the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences?

-          The Faculty provides a lot of various experiences to students and I encourage college students to read in subjects other than that of their major, as this would broaden their minds, and should keep in their minds that many of the currently available occupations will soon disappear, and so they should develop their skills to cope up with the age of technology and "smart" jobsthat are growing in a very fast pace, with the inability of the older generations to cope with, and so it is up to the younger generations to unchain themselves from the ideological control of the older generation and cope with the changes of the era.