I always found the whole ID situation in the US comical. Using the driver's license as a default document seems like it was an accidental thing. You then get

I always found the whole ID situation in the US comical. Using the driver's license as a default document seems like it was an accidental thing. You then get the Department of Motor Vehicles involved in tasks outside their scope (i. e. the parallel non-license ID document), and it guarantees a lack of standardization and then trying to hack it back into place (see: Real ID). We should have had a meaningful federal ID probably from the 1960s if not earlier-- once it became evident we needed some uniform way to identify people. Whatever department ended up owning it would be the obvious place to provide an API collection, which would probably end up looking a bit like oAuth with a variety of different grants (age, address, citizenship, other qualifications) that would be very evident through the login prompt. But that would freak the hell out of the Mark of the Beast people.