INDIANAPOLIS — Parents and others can easily retrieve up-to-date information on state school bus inspections with a new Indiana State Police web portal.

The agency conducts inspections of all school buses used to transport children to public and private schools. All buses are inspected at least annually. Buses that are more than 12 years old are inspected twice per year.

While school bus inspection reports are a public record, Indiana State Police officials said that historically there was not a simple way for parents, school officials or the public in general to view the thousands of inspection reports prepared by state police personnel each school year.

To make the records more accessible, the Indiana State Police Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Division, in collaboration with the Indiana Office of Technology and NIC USA subsidiary Indiana Interactive, developed a public access portal website where school bus inspection records can be viewed from the comfort of a parent's home computer.

The public access portal website became operational on July 1. The site contains records from more than 30,000 school bus inspections and will automatically update within days after future inspections are conducted.

"The Indiana State Police encourage parents to use this valuable resource to track the inspection reports of their child’s school bus," the agency said in an announcement.

The portal can be accessed here.

Last year, Indiana State Police began testing a web app aimed at helping troopers to streamline the school bus inspection process.