The UK has a much better plan (and it still sucks):

This article at CR80 News compares efforts in the USA, UK and OZ to have a Real ID. The UK has sensibky made this a central government responsibility - the same office will process passports. Some quotes about the UK effort:

Getting the national ID card through Parliament became a little more difficult with a report issued in June by the London School of Economics and Political science. Titled "The Identity Project: An Assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill and its Implications," the report says that the program would be too expensive and is likely to cost nearly double the $10.5 billion the government initially projected.

The project has too many purposes. According to researchers, "evidence from other national identity systems shows that they perform best when established for clear and focused purposes. The UK scheme has multiple rather general rationales, suggesting that it has been 'gold-plated' to justify the high tech scheme."

"No scheme on this scale has been undertaken anywhere in the world. Smaller and less ambitious schemes have encountered substantial technological and operational problems that are likely to be amplified in a large-scale national system. The use of biometrics creates particular concerns, because this technology has never been used at such a scale."

There's an extra concern here - will Britain's implementation push the EU to similar ID cards? Will the EU push back against what the UK is doing?