Dan Nguyen

News Applications Developer

Dan Nguyen was a news application developer at ProPublica. He was lead developer on several of ProPublica’s most complex news applications, including the Bailout Tracker and (Stimulus) Recovery Tracker.

For the “Dollars for Docs” project, Nguyen developed software to collect the drug company payment records and cross-referenced them against physician names in federal and state databases. He also developed the publicly searchable database for the payment records and wrote a series of guides to teach his data-gathering techniques to other journalists and researchers.

Previously, Dan worked as a reporter, web developer and multimedia producer for the Sacramento Bee and sacbee.com. His work on multimedia projects won awards from Editor and Publisher and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.

HUD Inspect: See if Publicly Subsidized Housing Units Passed or Failed Government Inspections

Across the country, publicly subsidized housing residents have discovered that passing scores on HUD inspections often don't match the reality of their living conditions. Look up housing complex scores near you.

Bailout Tracker: See Where More Than $600 Billion Went

ProPublica is still tracking where every dollar of taxpayer money from the 2008 bailout of the financial system has gone. See for yourself.

HUD Inspect

The government inspects taxpayer-subsidized apartment buildings. See which ones passed and failed.

About the Dollars for Docs Data

Details behind our drug company money database.

Updated Recovery Tracker

Once again, we’ve taken all the data used on the government’s stimulus Web site, Recovery.gov, spiffed it up and added thousands of other recovery spending records — the law doesn't require all recipients to report to Recovery.gov.

SOPA Opera Update: Opposition Surges

SOPA Blackout Day led to a surge in opposition among members of Congress.

SOPA Opera

Well-funded interests on either side of SOPA and PIPA are lining up support among members of Congress. This database keeps track of where members of Congress stand.

SOPA Opera: Which Legislators Support SOPA and PIPA?

In the next few weeks, among the most talked-about legislation will be the Stop Online Piracy Act — commonly referred to as SOPA — which, if passed, would give the Attorney General the authority to block access to foreign websites deemed to be dedicated to copyright infringement.

Piercing the Veil, More Drug Companies Reveal Payments to Doctors

An update of ProPublica's Dollars for Docs database includes more than $760 million in payments from 12 pharmaceutical companies to physicians and other health-care providers for consulting, speaking, research and expenses.

How the Heart Rhythm Society Sells Access

The Heart Rhythm Society’s annual conference is a marketing bonanza for drug companies and medical device makers.

How the Heart Rhythm Society Sells Access

Dollars for Docs Adds Payouts from HIV Drug Maker

ViiV Healthcare, which specializes in HIV medications, disclosed paying $3.4 million in speaking and consulting fees to doctors during the first three quarters of 2010. It becomes the eighth company in Dollars for Docs database.

Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data

A series of technical and programming tutorials on how scraped, parsed, and organized data for "Dollars for Docs."

Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data

A series of programming and technical guides on how we collected data for Dollars for Docs.

The Coder's Cause in "Dollars for Docs"

Public records, as a programming challenge, in our Dollars for Docs project.

Chapter 3: Turning PDFs to Text

Dollars for Docs Data Guide: A tutorial on several methods to convert PDFs to spreadsheets.

Chapter 2: Reading Data from Flash Sites

How to read data from Flash-based websites, part of our data-scraping guide for Dollars for Docs.

Chapter 1. Using Google Refine to Clean Messy Data

How to use the Google Refine application to make sense of imperfectly recorded data.

Chapter 4: Scraping Data from HTML

Dollars for Docs Data Guide: A tutorial on scraping HTML from websites.

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