Competitive forces are another issue to contend with. "There is an ecosystem of vendors who offer identity verification and authentication solutions that would not want a centralized system for fear of going out of business," Mattei said.
There are also significant data privacy hurdles to overcome. States and the federal government would need to coordinate to resolve governance issues, and this might prompt "big brother" concerns about the extent to which the federal government could monitor the activities of its citizens.
Many people have "a bit of an allergic reaction" when anything resembling a national ID comes up, Ramzan said.