Lat week, the US Senate passed the Faster FOIA Act of 2011 which will, according to one of the measure's authors, establish an "advisory panel to examine agency backlogs in processing FOIA requests and provide recommendations to Congress for legislative and administrative action to enhance agency responses to such requests. The panel will be tasked with examining whether the system for charging fees and granting fee waivers under FOIA should be reformed in order to reduce delays in processing fee requests, as well as identifying any other methods to reduce the delay in the processing of FOIA requests." The measure will now be considered in the House.
More on the Faster FOIA Act of 2011 here and here.