Question

Difficulty: MediumStatement and Assumptions

An official circular from the State Administration Department states: "To ensure the timely resolution of citizen complaints in rural districts, the administration has launched a mandatory digital mobile application for filing all civil grievances directly to the District Magistrate's office."

Which of the following assumptions are implicit in the given statement? (Select all that apply)

  1. Citizens residing in rural districts have sufficient access to smartphones and internet connectivity to utilize the digital application.Answer
  2. The District Magistrate's office possesses the required technical infrastructure and personnel to process and resolve grievances received digitally.Answer
  3. C
    The total volume of physical complaints filed at local administrative offices will decrease immediately.
  4. D
    Digital governance initiatives are globally proven to be the most cost-effective method for managing administrative workloads.

Answer

The assumptions that citizens have smartphone/internet access and that the District Magistrate's office has the technical infrastructure are both implicit.
The directive introduces a mandatory mobile application for rural districts to achieve timely resolution of complaints. For this plan to be logically feasible, the author must implicitly take for granted that the rural target audience has the technological means to use the app, and that the receiving office has the infrastructure to process the complaints. Without these two premises, the directive falls apart.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the core objective and method proposed in the statement.
Objective: Timely resolution of complaints. Method: Mandatory digital mobile application in rural districts directed to the Magistrate's office.
Identifying the goal and the proposed action helps determine what conditions must be true for the action to succeed.
2
Evaluate the candidate assumption regarding rural smartphone and internet access.
It is a necessary prerequisite. If citizens lack access, a mandatory app cannot achieve the stated goal.
An assumption is an unstated premise that validates the author's argument or proposed plan.
3
Evaluate the candidate assumption regarding the Magistrate's office infrastructure.
It is also a necessary prerequisite. The office must be capable of receiving and processing the digital data to ensure 'timely resolution'.
Without this capacity, the direct filing system would fail, meaning the author must assume this capacity exists.
4
Evaluate the remaining options to distinguish assumptions from inferences or external facts.
Decreasing physical complaints is a future inference. Global cost-effectiveness is an external factual claim.
Assumptions must be underlying premises, not results of the action or unrelated general truths.

Key Concept

Identifying valid unstated premises that are logically necessary for an administrative directive to be practical and effective.
Estimated Time:1m 30s
Rate this question