Teresa Takai did not receive a self-destructing taped message inquiring if she would accept the mission. The Real ID Act suddenly appeared as an unfunded mandate from Congress to overhaul states’ driver’s licensing on a tight deadline.

The act, signed into law May 11, 2005, seeks to prevent illegal aliens and would-be terrorists from getting driver’s licenses. It forces states, within three years of the act’s passage, to require documentation that goes beyond what most states ask license applicants to produce: a photo identity document, documentation of birth, proof of Social Security number, and documentation of an applicant’s name and address of principal residence.

In addition, the law requires states to verify those documents and keep digital copies — two provisions that would necessitate more robust storage capacity and connections between disparate databases than most states have. Among other provisions, the Real ID Act also calls for tamper-proof, machine-readable licenses manufactured in secure areas by employees with security clearances.

The law will affect an estimated 240 million driver’s licenses. Yet with the deadline for deployment less than two years away, the federal government still has not issued technical requirements to guide states.

“We think it will be a struggle, to some degree, to even get started by then,” said Tom Jarrett, Delaware’s secretary of technology and chief information technology officer. He is also chairman of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ Real ID Work Group.

Takai, Michigan’s CIO, is in a double bind. She is in the midst of updating a 30-year-old computer system that state officials use to manage driver’s licenses. If she had the luxury of time, she would postpone the upgrade to ensure the new system’s compatibility with Real ID’s requirements. But with retirement looming for the few remaining employees who are proficient in an older technology, Takai can’t wait.

She is running two races with separate clocks and finish lines. Her strategy is to upgrade the old system and hope it will be compatible with requirements of the Real ID Act. “All we can do is guess at what we think the implementation is going to be,” she said. “If we get it wrong, we’re going to have a brand new system that we will have to go back in and change.”