This article attempts to answer a simple question: How do municipal employees rate their utilisation of work procedures as a critical driver of operations and performance? This question is imperative for service delivery, given the perennial poor performance of local government in the Eastern Cape as reported by the Auditor-General of South Africa (AGSA). Noted root causes relevant for the research are weak municipal systems and processes, as well as a lack of appropriate controls towards compliance. So far as there is interest in how' an activity is done, there must be procedures to follow. As part of the throughput of an organisation's system, work procedures are critical to organisation operations and performance. Literature shows that from an operations and performance viewpoint, work procedures are critical in driving efficiency, compliance, introduction of new practices, quality and standards and organisational culture.