Federal workers could enjoy a "phased retirement" from the office Uncle Sam soon will make that easier to do. On Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will publish proposed regulations allowing feds to take "phased retirement." "Phased retirement will provide an alternative to the current all-or-nothing approach to retirement," said Ken Zawodny, the OPM associate director for retirement services. With approval from their agency management, outgoing retirees would work part time, while mentoring younger workers. This approach helps transitions occur smoothly, transferring valuable institutional knowledge from workers at the end of their careers. That's a good plan, according to Joseph A. Beaudoin, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE), who looks forward "to the swift implementation" of new regulations. Many of these federal workers have 30-40 years of service and knowledge doing important jobs like regulating nuclear power plants and caring for America's veterans. Our nation cannot afford to lose its most experienced employees to sudden or early retirements. The phased retirement program is a smart way to ensure the next generation of the federal workforce is prepared to build on the achievements of today's dedicated federal employees. Mentoring isn't just a goal of the program - it's required. The part-time employees will be expected to spend 20 percent of their time mentoring. That requirement, the regs make clear, will be hard to shake: "OPM expects waivers of the mentoring requirement to be very rare." President Obama signed the law authorizing this program 11 months ago, but the rules are just now ready for public consumption. The public has 60 days to comment on the new regs before they are finalized. It took this long to publish the rules, Zawodny said, because it "was an incredibly complicated process, given the implications for agencies and employees. OPM put together a cross-disciplinary team to make sure that, once drafted, the regulations would implement the intention of Congress while, at the same time, making sure that they were detailed enough to allow implementation, once finalized. That process necessarily was time-consuming and deliberate. Once implemented, here's the way the program will work: Phased retirement will allow a worker to partially retire, "while continuing employment on a part-time basis and continuing to earn additional retirement benefits proportionately based upon the additional part-time employment," says the proposed regs that are scheduled for publication in the Federal Register. The employee will be considered a part-time employee, according to the regs, and "will work half-time and will receive one half of what his or her annuity would have been had the individual retired completely from Federal service."