When governments want to use their own procedures, UNDP assessments provide a way for country offices to determine their adequacy, identify potential gaps, and select specific procurement, human resources or financial modalities that will ensure transparency and strengthen capacities. Procurement arrangements assign roles and responsibilities to governments and UNDP country offices under full national implementation, with a deeper level of operational involvement where UNDP is the responsible party and provides procurement support. Under the NIM modality, the organization undertakes responsibilities in multiple ways throughout the procurement cycle: manage payments to suppliers through its ERP system; support governments in developing specifications and sourcing strategies; and, upon request, substantial operational involvement from UNDP. 

NIM projects result in the procurement of millions of dollars and the organization recruits experts, based in project teams or ministries, to ensure delivery targets are met. Alignment – the use of local systems – is one of the five fundamental principles of the Paris Declaration for Aid Effectiveness (2005). UNDP promotes inclusive partnerships, ownership, capacity development and delivering results through National Implementation (NIM), a modality that provides a legal and accountability framework, as well as appropriate provisions and tools, in the context of country-level programming. NIM is a complex and critical part of what UNDP does.