A consultant is a recognized authority or specialist in a specific field to be engaged for a temporary period of time in an advisory or consultative capacity. A consultant should have special skills or knowledge not normally possessed by regular staff members of the Organization and the functions for which they are engaged should not be of a continuing need. The functions of a consultant are supposed to be results-oriented and normally involve analysing problems, facilitating seminars or training courses, preparing documents for conferences and meetings or writing reports on matters within their area of expertise or on which their advice or assistance is sought.
An individual contractor is an individual engaged by the Organization for a temporary period of time to provide expertise, skills or knowledge for the performance of a specific task or piece of work, which is short-term by nature. The work assignment may involve full-time or part-time functions similar to those of staff members, such as the provision of translation, editing, language training, public information, secretarial or clerical and part-time maintenance services or other functions that could be performed by staff members.
Consultants or individual contractors cannot perform core functions of the Organization and should not be used as a substitute for staff members. Entities should consistently review requirements and explore the feasibility of outsourcing unskilled functions of a continuous nature or skilled functions required on a non-continuous basis or seek the establishment of posts through the budgetary process for functions required on a continuous basis.
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