Empirical Assessment of Data Pipeline Reliability in Nigerian E-Government Systems

Government data pipelines that regularly fail to process or update records undermine service delivery and policy decisions, and empirically assessing reliability in Nigerian e-government systems provides evidence for technical and governance interventions. This study empirically assessed the reliability of data pipelines in three Nigerian e-government platforms: the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System, the National Identity Management System, and the Business Registration Portal. A pipeline reliability assessment methodology was employed, combining structured interviews with 12 system administrators, log file analysis for downtime and error events over a 24-month period where accessible, and a validated data freshness and completeness audit of records samples. Results showed mean pipeline uptime of 86.3 percent, 91.4 percent, and 78.7 percent for IPPIS, NIMC, and CAC systems respectively, all below the 99.5 percent target for critical government infrastructure. Data completeness rates in IPPIS were 92.1 percent for mandatory fields but 71.4 percent for optional but policy-relevant fields. Mean data latency between field capture and system availability was 4.7 business days across the three systems. System outages showed significant clustering around month-end processing cycles. The study fills an empirical gap in Nigerian e-government systems reliability research and recommends adoption of DataOps practices for pipeline monitoring, independent technical audits by NITDA, SLA-based vendor contracts with reliability penalties, and a government data pipeline observability framework as the foundational technical investment.

Keywords: data pipeline reliability, e-government systems, Nigeria, DataOps, system availability