I'm in the UK and my driver's license is the only form of "official" ID I normally carry.

Much to my delight, we canceled the silly project to issue government ID cards.

Should we really consider how it's done in a country where people drive on the wrong side of the road? :)

Who issued your driver's license?

But not everyone had a drivers license or a passport - so they wanted everyone to have a separate ID card. Generally, having a formal ID has only been required in the UK during dire emergencies (i.e. World Wars) and contrary to what the government of the time thought we are not in the middle of such a crisis.

Every German older than 16 is required by law to have an ID card or passport. As of November 2010, ID cards carry RFID chips with the same data that's written on the card plus an optional fingerprint. Passports have had the chip for a while already, but the fingerprint is mandatory there. Driver's licenses are not considered a valid means of identification outside traffic.

Likewise in France, except as far as I know there are no rfid chips in the national id card (yet anyway). And in belgium (where the ID card is the size of a credit card and has a small chip, I don't know if it has an RFID chip)

The point is not the government issuing you an ID. The problem comes when it require you to carry it at all times.

In Australia it would be a major hassle to not carry around a drivers license, not all the time but things always come up where you need ID and a drivers license usually covers that.

The UK Government

In France, the driver's license isn't even allowed as an ID, passport or ID card yes, license no.

Same in Greece, I don't know anyone who uses their driver's license as an ID. I'm not sure if it's disallowed explicitly, but nobody does it.

I'd estimate that about half the people I know in Sweden and in Norway, under 35, don't actually have a drivers license. And of those half again have no real intention of getting one.