"GAO's analysis of subject matter specialists' comments, related literature, and interviews with Office of Personnel Management (OPM) officials identified a number of important characteristics for a modern, effective classification system, which GAO consolidated into eight key attributes. GAO's analysis shows that in concept the current General Schedule (GS) classification system's design incorporates several key attributes including internal and external equity, transparency, simplicity, and rank in position. However, as OPM implemented the system, the attributes of transparency, internal equity, simplicity, flexibility, and adaptability are reduced. This occurs, in part, because some attributes are at odds with one another so fully achieving one attribute comes at the expense of another. Thus, OPM, working with its stakeholders, is challenged to determine how best to optimize each attribute."--