Five years ago, the General Assembly approved legislation that put all of Indiana's financial information right at residents' fingertips.
“We want people to be engaged immediately,” Crouch said the website. “We want more graphics, things that peak your interest so you want to keep looking, keep accessing.
“All the information is there,” she said with a smile, “we just need to put a little lipstick on it.”
Crouch, of Evansville, fought hard for the Transparency Portal while serving four terms in the Indiana House of Representatives. Now, as auditor, she has been instrumental in its implementation.
The portal provides access to all of the state's financial information, from state budgets to revenue streams, contract amounts and even employee salaries.
“And interestingly enough,” she said with a chuckle, “that's the most visited page.”
The site also boasts a breakdown of state expenditures, details on its $15 billion in assets, links to county auditor's offices and even the credit card transactions of the 5 percent of state employees who carry expense cards.
The portal, Crouch said, was built on “four pillars,” — transparency, accountability, efficiency and interaction.
“But the foundation for it all,” she said, is transparency. “Because when you and I are out there looking, people pay more attention. And that provides for greater accountability.”
Last year, Crouch said the website received about 163,000 hits, but considering Indiana's population is more than 6.5 million, that number could be better.
It's been ranked in the top three in user-friendliness of similar state-run sites, but she still sees much room for improvement. So she is visiting communities in all 92 counties to talk to residents about how they believe it can be improved.
“It's word intensive,” she said during a visit to The Sun-Commercial Thursday afternoon. “So we're overhauling it with more visual information. We know people retain 80 percent of what they see and not nearly as much of what they read.
“Even though it's been ranked in the top three, we think it could be better. We want to get the public interacting with the site. And the more the public participates, the better government becomes.
“So we somehow have to make the public aware that there is a tool they can use to track where their tax dollars are being spent.”
Crouch said they also would like to work with information technology specialists to create a search engine where visitors to the site could simply type in such requests as, “How much money did the state spend on the Lincoln Memorial Bridge project in 2016?” or even “How much was budgeted in the state's General Fund in 2014?”
Such user-friendliness, she said, will go a long way in not scaring away those leery of numbers.
She also hopes to add more detailed information about various state funds as well as the revenue and expenditures of “quasi agencies,” ones like the Indiana Economic Development Corp. that act independently of state government but often accept large tax dollar donations.
“We've got six on the site now,” she said, “but we want to get more.
“Those tax dollars we collect don't magically become ours,” she said with a shake of her head. “Every dollar that comes to government has a name and face attached to it. So it's extremely important that those dollars are spent with respect and consideration.”