Article: Federal workers once got own resolutions.(NATION)

Byline: Thomas V. DiBacco, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

In the old days, Washington administrators used the new year to persuade federal employees, who were mostly clerks at the time, to turn over a new leaf at work.

"New Year's ... is likewise a fitting occasion for the correction of any abuses or irregularities which may exist, and with this in view, I have to request that you will ... report the name of every clerk whose work does not come up to the standard of the Office," Secretary of the Interior Robert McClelland wrote in a letter to department heads in 1853, exactly 150 years ago today.

A decade earlier, Congress began the quest to ...

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