The Office of Personnel Management has issued a “white paper” on federal pay that officials hope will start the process toward an overhaul of how salaries are set, a project that they concede will take a long time even in the best of scenarios. The white paper, addressed to the “public service community,” identifies the following as the major problems with the pay system today: “it does not reflect market pay levels; it has minimal ability to encourage and reward achievement and results; its structure suits the workforce of 1950, not today’s knowledge workers; its prescribed procedures and practices effectively preclude agencies from tailoring pay programs to their specific missions and labor markets; and it is disintegrating.”