Knowledge Transfer in Government: How to Keep Expertise When Employees Retire

Key takeaways

• Start with the knowledge, not the headcount. List the critical roles, tasks and decisions that depend on employees who could retire soon.
• Combine methods. Mentoring and job shadowing pass on judgment, communities of practice spread it across offices, and documentation keeps it findable.
• Run mentoring as a structured program. Name a senior champion, match outside the chain of command, give each pair a knowledge transfer plan, pilot first and evaluate at the midpoint and end, as OPM recommends.
• Tie it to succession planning. Federal law already requires agencies to run management succession programs and to train managers in mentoring employees.
• Measure readiness, not attendance: critical roles with a ready successor, knowledge transfer plans completed and time until successors work on their own.

How Many Federal Employees Are Eligible to Retire?

As of August 2026, 13.6% of federal employees are eligible to retire, according to OPM’s Federal Workforce Data, and the median age of the federal workforce is 47.

The government-wide figure is an average. OPM’s data lets you filter retirement eligibility by department, agency, subagency and occupational series, and by retirement timeframe. Start by looking up your own agency and the occupations your mission depends on.

Being eligible doesn’t mean leaving tomorrow, and that is the trap. OPM’s talent management guidance warns that organizations often don’t see gaps in knowledge management until the need for knowledge transfer is urgent, such as a critical staff member’s impending retirement.

What Is Knowledge Transfer in Government?

Knowledge transfer in government is the deliberate passing of know-how from experienced employees to the people who will carry the mission next. It covers explicit knowledge, such as procedures, regulations and systems, which can be written down, and tacit knowledge, such as judgment, relationships and the reasons behind past decisions, which mostly passes from person to person.

Much of what an agency loses at retirement is tacit: how to read a difficult case, whom to call at a partner agency, why a process works the way it does. That is why documentation alone is not enough.

Which Knowledge Transfer Methods Work Best?

The methods that work best combine people and documents: mentoring and job shadowing for judgment, communities of practice for spreading expertise, and documentation for what must stay findable. Match the method to the knowledge.

How to Run a Federal Mentoring Program for Knowledge Transfer

To run a federal mentoring program for knowledge transfer, map the knowledge at risk, name a senior champion, recruit experts as mentors, match them with successors outside their chain of command, give each pair a knowledge transfer plan, pilot, then evaluate. OPM’s Best Practices: Mentoring guide (2008) sets out the same core steps.

1. Map the knowledge at risk. With managers, list critical roles and tasks, who holds the know-how and when they could retire. Flag knowledge that only one person has.
2. Make the case and name a champion. Write a short business case and ask a senior leader to sponsor the program. OPM recommends a steering committee with members from different offices, not mainly from HR.
3. Recruit mentors and mentees. Invite retirement-eligible experts to mentor, and name successors or high-potential employees as mentees. OPM considers 3 to 5 protégés per senior mentor a reasonable number.
4. Match outside the chain of command. OPM advises matching protégés with mentors outside their office or unit, because pairing within the same chain of command may cause conflict. Match on the knowledge to transfer, goals and location.
5. Hold an orientation and agree on terms. Each pair sets goals, meeting frequency and expectations. OPM notes the mentoring agreement can be included in the employee’s Individual Development Plan.
6. Write a knowledge transfer plan for each pair. List the tasks, decisions, cases, contacts and documents the mentee must learn, and check them off together.
7. Pilot first. Start with one office or occupation, collect feedback and fix what doesn’t work before you scale.
8. Evaluate and recognize. OPM recommends evaluating at least twice, at the midpoint and at the end, with input from mentors, protégés and supervisors, and closing with a graduation or recognition ceremony that senior leaders attend.

For program design beyond knowledge transfer, from goals to training, see our mentorship program guide.

What Does OPM Say About Mentoring?

OPM treats mentoring as a core development tool. Its career development guidance lists the purposes agencies use formal mentoring for, including helping new employees settle into the agency, creating a knowledge sharing environment, developing mission critical skills and improving retention. It describes a mentor as usually outside the protégé’s chain of supervision.

OPM’s talent management guidance also asks agencies how they can build a comprehensive process to transfer knowledge from experts to entry and mid-career professionals, and advises them to design a strategy for collecting, transferring and managing knowledge.

How Does Mentoring Support Succession Planning in the Federal Government?

Mentoring turns a succession plan into readiness: it gives named successors time with the people whose roles they may fill. Federal rules already expect it. Under 5 U.S.C. 4121, each agency must set up a comprehensive management succession program and train managers in mentoring employees. OPM’s regulation at 5 CFR 412.201 requires management succession programs to provide continuing learning experiences such as details, mentoring, coaching, learning groups and projects.

• Name at least one successor for each critical role.
• Pair each successor with the incumbent or another expert in that work.
• Add a detail or stretch project that builds the experience the role needs.
• Review readiness every six months and adjust the plan.

For a full process, see our guide to succession planning.

How to Measure Knowledge Transfer

Measure knowledge transfer by readiness, not attendance: how many critical roles have a ready successor, how much of each knowledge transfer plan is done and how soon successors can work on their own.

OPM’s mentoring guide notes that most agencies with established formal mentoring programs use the Kirkpatrick four-level evaluation model, and suggests a follow-up survey, interviews or focus group three to six months after the program, to see whether behavior has changed.

How Chronus Helps Federal Agencies

Chronus helps agencies keep the employees they have, transfer institutional knowledge before it walks out the door and grow their next generation of leaders, securely and at agency scale. See mentoring software for government agencies.

• Federal security. Chronus is FedRAMP Moderate Authorized, listed as FedRAMP Certified on the FedRAMP Marketplace since April 2025, and holds a DoD Impact Level 4 (IL4) Provisional Authorization from DISA. Deployment is GovCloud-hosted. Read more about Chronus security.
• Matching at agency scale. Pair thousands of employees in minutes and replace the spreadsheets that cap how many people your program can reach.
• Structure for every pair. Intelligent matching, structured guided conversations and outcome measurement in one platform, built for mentoring.
• Reporting that defends your budget. Track retention, advancement and engagement outcomes.
• Human-centered. Optional AI capabilities support the humans in your program, with human oversight always. The only data required to run the platform is name and email.
• Integration ready. Connects with HR systems, identity providers and collaboration tools, configured to fit your agency’s security posture, with U.S.-based customer success and managed services teams accredited to work with federal agencies.

“It’s exciting that we’re able to match people with someone from their background – someone who can help them get prepared and guide them through their career,” said Tobias Olsen, former Leader Development Program Manager at the US Coast Guard Academy.

Learn more about Chronus’s mentoring software.

Frequently Asked Questions About Federal Knowledge Transfer and Mentoring