In a new report, the Government Accountability Office says the Office of Personnel Management needs to be more aggressive in making over the General Schedule, the classification system that guides salaries for most white-collar federal jobs and influences everything from recruitment to budget planning.

This is not the first time that GAO has suggested the 55-year-old GS system is antiquated, like a pocket watch in the smartphone era.

But now, auditors have offered a list of eight major attributes of an ideal pay system, based on conversations with former OPM officials, labor unions, other employees’ associations and past studies.

GAO says the GS System, in concept, has these attributes. But the problem, according to GAO, lies in the way OPM has sought to balance those attributes. Case in point: the GS System has 420 occupations in 23 “families,” with 15 grade levels. Such a vast matrix is anything but simple and easy to operate, unless officials know the nuances that separate one job from another, according to the GAO report.

GAO concluded the report by urging OPM Director Katherine Archuleta to lead a full examination of the GS system and to improve OPM’s oversight of it. When asked for response, Archuleta acknowledged the need for reform, adding that President Barack Obama has called for an expert committee to study the issue.

But, she said, wholesale reform is “really a very complicated issue.”

“It would be a daunting effort, but one that has probably reached its time,” she said, adding that she was open to conversations with members of Congress.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requested the GAO report.

“One of the key strengths of the federal government’s General Schedule system is that it promotes equal pay for equal work, and I agree that OPM should work with stakeholders to examine ways to improve and strengthen the management and effectiveness of the system,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member.

Republicans were more critical, of both the GS system and OPM’s administration of it.

“Under the GS, designed in 1949 for a workforce of clerks, employees continue to receive taxpayer-funded salary increases driven by the passage of time, not performance,” said a spokesperson for Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) by email. “Within-grade increases were denied to an astonishing .16 percent of eligible GS workers during the last five years. Further troubling, OPM has not conducted oversight reviews of the system since the 1980s. Today’s report should provide enough evidence that the administration should take reform seriously to better steward taxpayer funds.”

More agencies turn to alternatives

In the report, GAO notes a growing threat to the government’s main personnel system: agencies have found workarounds. With congressional approval, many have set up alternative pay systems that take what GAO calls a “broadband approach,” with fewer, broader categories.

Today, one in five white-collar federal employees is paid under an alternative system. Those employees are most likely to work in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), or financial regulation. Notably, they tend to earn about 10 percent more, on average, than other federal employees with similar jobs paid under the GS schedule.

Tough words for OPM

While OPM is supposed to update and revise GS categories, the agency says each standard can take more than six months. According to GAO, OPM has left more than a quarter of the standards untouched since 1990. The role of food safety inspector, GAO noted, hasn’t been updated since June 1971. Furthermore, GAO notes, despite the abundance of job categories, there is none for cybersecurity at a time when agencies are clamoring for specialists.

By law, OPM is supposed to oversee how agencies apply the GS system to ensure consistency across government. GAO says the personnel agency is skirting this responsibility.

“OPM has not reviewed agency classification programs since the 1980s,” the report stated. “Therefore, OPM is not in the best position to know how well or how consistently agencies are complying with classification standards, policy or guidance.”

OPM officials told GAO that those reviews were ineffective, time-consuming and problematic when agencies disagreed with OPM’s findings, according to the report.

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