The statute now requires that agencies grant or deny your request within 20 working days unless an “unusual circumstance” specifically described in the statute occurs.

However, the greatest impediment to the successful use of the FOI Act has been delay by agencies in processing requests. Although the statute has always required agencies to respond to FOI requests by granting or denying them (not just acknowledging them) within a short timeframe, few agencies have consistently adhered to the time limits.

For journalists, the nearly routine failure of agencies to provide timely access to records has triggered the need to go outside the act and get information from sources who may have seen the records, not from the records themselves. That situation has rarely pleased either the journalists or the agencies about which they write.

In passing the Electronic FOI Improvements Act in late 1996, Congress considered that the burgeoning delay problem at agencies actually threatened the effectiveness of the FOI Act and addressed delays in three specific ways:

• It established expedited review for some requesters in special circumstances.

• It provided for multi-track processing, allowing agencies to divide simple and more complex requests into different “tracks” and to process them in order within tracks.

• It changed the standards under which delay could be considered acceptable.

The law permits courts to allow agencies additional time for response in “exceptional circumstances” provided the agency is exercising “due diligence” in getting responses out to requesters. The new amendments do not allow agencies to count routine delays as “exceptional circumstances.” (The new law actually extended routinely allowable processing time from 10 to 20 working days.)

More generally, in passing the Electronic FOI Act, members of Congress expressed a hope that the day-to-day provision of more government databases easily accessible to the public would diminish the need for FOI requests.

Next section: You may be entitled to expedited review