The SPF Initiative is part of existing national planning processes, rather than creating a parallel process. Many countries already have some elements of a social protection floor in place or are in the process of implementing them. Therefore, national Social Protection Floors are developed based on the existing framework of county-specific social protection systems, institutional and administrative structures, economic constraints, fiscal space, political dynamics and social policy needs, objectives and priorities.

The national social protection floor policies are thus country-defined and the implementation process is country-led. The Coalition members of the SPF Initiative play a consultative role and can provide technical and financial support to the national SPF processes.

Although there are a variety of ways to implement national social protection floors, some generic activities have been identified as key milestones in the construction of national social protection floors:

To support the national processes, Coalition members of the SPF Initiative:

• are engaged in global and joint advocacy to integrate SPFs into development strategies, mobilize resources and increase inter-agency collaboration;
• offer technical and financial support to national SPF task forces for  any of the above mentioned key activities;
• collect evidence, document experiences and develop, social budgeting tools, actuarial models, tools for needs’ assessments and rapid cost assessment tools (for example the Social Protection Expenditure Reviews (SPER) and the Rapid Assessment Protocol);
• are involved in the continuous development and updating of the UN manual and strategic framework for joint UN country operations (produced in 2009) to be used for implementation of the SPF at the national level;
• provide capacity building and training programmes together with the International Training Centre (ITC) in Turin and partner universities, including: the University of Maastricht, the Netherlands, the University of Lausanne, Switzerland and the University of Mauritius.

• support South-South and triangular cooperation through several initiatives. For example, SPF success stories elaborated by national experts have been documented in the ILO and the UNDP Special Unit for South-South Cooperation (UNDP SU/SSC)  publication "Sharing Innovative Experiences: Successful Social Protection Floor Experiences".

Concrete SPF-I inter agency activities are under way in Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Rwanda, Mozambique, Argentina, El Salvador, Haiti, Nepal, Thailand and Vietnam. Interest in the Social Protection Floor Initiative has also been expressed by Algeria, Botswana, Indonesia, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Ghana, Armenia, Philippines and others.♦