The head of the digital payments services taskforce in charge of investigating whether to privatise the Medicare and aged care payment systems was only appointed last month, has not been given any terms of reference and does not know the name of the IT systems used by the Department of Human Services for Medicare transactions.

In an at times fiery Senate community affairs legislation committee hearing today, Department of Health secretary Martin Bowles and digital payments services taskforce lead John Cahill were unable to name the systems used, but Mr Bowles claimed that some were up to 30 years old, they were inefficient and were in need of an upgrade.