Encore: Work that matters in the second half of life.

The retirement of aging baby boomers is creating a talent gap in the federal workforce, but also an opportunity to help fill that gap.

“Most people talk about the retirement loss as a problem for the future, and I would argue it is a problem of today. We are already seeing that exodus of talent,” said Max Stier, president of Partnership for Public Service, in a discussion organized by the Council for Excellence in Government.

In “Hiring After the Baby-Boom Brain Drain,”The Washington Post reported on the Partnership’s efforts to help channel experienced employees from other sectors — many of them aging baby boomers themselves — into government jobs.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) estimates that about one-third of full-time government employees will retire during the next five years, with a higher percentage in management ranks. An estimated 530,000 federal jobs will be up for grabs by 2012, the Partnership estimates. Many of those positions are at leadership levels.

The Partnership and IBM have launched a pilot project called FedExperience that will help fill 14,000 key jobs in the U.S. Department of the Treasury in the next two years. They have their sights set on experienced workers seeking encore careers. Working with AARP, Civic Ventures and other organizations, they plan to expand the model to other agencies and corporations.