One of FOIA Requesters biggest complaint is the time it takes for an agency to process the request. Often, requests will go into litigation and if a timetable for the agency to process is not worked out between the parties, the government will seek a stay of the case to allow it to process the records. A number of factors will be weighed by te agency in seeking the amount of time it requests to process the records. The agency will then file a declaration seeking the court's permission for the delay -- this is called an Open America declaration. Rather than bore you with a synopsis of where that came from, suffice it to say an agency must show that its backlog causing the delay was unexpected and that its making progress in reducing the backlog.
In a recent case, the FBI asked for a stay of 29 months to finish processing. United States District Court Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had other ideas, finding that the FBI failed to meet the requirements that would allow it to get a full Open America Stay and ordered the FBI to finish processing the documents all non-classified records in the request by August 1, 2013.
There are other similar cases pending in the District Court and it will be interesting to see if this decision affects the outcomes of those cases.