Last year, a military veteran living in Massachusetts's sixth congressional district tossed aside a piece of mail from the Veterans Administration, without realizing that the information he needed to access his benefits was buried at the end of the six-page letter. Once he realized his mistake, he called the office of Seth Moulton, his representative.

“He said, ‘I realize they sent a letter, and I should read every line, but come on! Six pages and you’re putting this in the last paragraph?’” recalls Andy Flick, Moulton’s deputy chief of staff.

Case workers in Moulton’s office helped the man sort out his problems with the VA. But they also brought the issue to Moulton’s legislative team to see if they could help fix the underlying system that created such a clunky letter. Now, that team is drafting a piece of legislation—tentatively named the Too Long; Didn’t Read Act—which would require government agencies to spell out actionable steps for constituents in a black box on the front page of any piece of mail.

It’s a simple ask. But Flick says it shows what can happen when Congress functions the way it’s supposed to. “If that person had been silently frustrated, then people across the country would continue to be silently frustrated,” says Flick. “Because he called in, members like Seth are able to take measurable steps to fix it.”

Of course, Congress hasn't functioned the way it's supposed to in quite a while. That's one reason why last summer, the non-profit OpenGov Foundation, sent teams to shadow 58 congressional staffers in 20 offices across the country—including Moulton's. Their objective: to study exactly what happens to every call, email, letter, and yes, even fax, Congress receives, and figure out what resonates and why.

Mollie Ruskin led the OpenGov research team. Esther Kang

Founded by Republican Congressman Darrell Issa and his former staffer Seamus Kraft in 2012, the OpenGov Foundation today published the results of that research. It provides a blueprint not only for congressional offices pushing for more efficient tools to track public input, but for advocacy groups vying to be heard, and for technology companies that could help the two better connect.

"If you're a constituent, and you get an email that says to call Congress and tell them x, y, or z, you're sold on the idea that it’s going to make a difference," Kraft says. "But is it?"

The OpenGov Foundation report, shared exclusively with WIRED, shows that despite how fractured Congress appears, constituent outreach really can work. Just not in the ways you might assume.

Interns in Closets With Lousy Tools

It almost always starts with the interns.

When advocacy groups target thousands of calls or emails at a single member of Congress, it's these low-level and in some cases unpaid interns and junior staffers they inundate. In one particular office the OpenGov Foundation staff observed, those interns sat side-by-side at a shared desk in a walk-in closet that was so small, one of them had to stand up in order to let the other one out. On the wall inside the closet, they'd taped a poster with a drawing of a window on it.

"We're looking at building capacity for Congress," Meag Doherty, one of the researchers, who previously worked as a congressional staffer, says of the tools OpenGov Foundation builds. "Seeing something like interns in a closet reminds me that is needed."

The technology Congress currently uses to process calls and emails doesn't make their job any easier. Congressional offices have the option of using just 10 authorized constituent relationship management systems. One of the most popular, Intranet Quorum, is designed by Lockheed Martin. It was since sold to Leidos. These are software products that, at least in theory, help staffers track constituent outreach from the first phone call to the final response. But in practice, Doherty says, using them is like "entering a time machine," compared to tools from companies like SalesForce that are widely used in the commercial space.