It's really hard to say. There's no average per se, because one person will take 30 days to respond to a four-page request, while another will say that it's very complex and will take six months. It really depends on the request. Institutions rely on factors they view as important to evaluate the request and indicate to us whether it will take them two years, one year, six months or 30 days.
We receive complaints related to these prolonged response times, and the goal of our investigations is to determine whether the extension is reasonable considering the circumstances when the request was made. We expect a request covering 60,000 files to take longer to process than one that only deals with 10 pages.