In July 2009, the NSDI Council adopted the Decision on Establishing the Working Group on Capacity Building of NSDI. The basic goal of the Working Group is to propose the most efficient ways of capacity building of NSDI for the purpose of training users to accept the concept of NSDI and introduce it into the working processes.

Since there is not enough information and knowledge on the representation of spatial data in the Croatian education system, the research was carried out by the Working Group, which included secondary school educational institutions, faculties and research institutions in the Republic of Croatia. Preliminary results of the research conducted among teachers of secondary education institutions are presented in this paper.

The aim of the research conducted among teachers by the Working Group on Capacity Building of NSDI is to gain insight of the prevalence and use of spatial data in the Croatian educational system with special emphasis on the NSDI, to determine whether the curriculum corresponds to modern trends in society, and to obtain recommendations for improving instruction in the use of spatial data.

An online questionnaire was produced for research purposes containing 17 questions of combined type. The survey is still on the webpage of the Croatian State Geodetic Administration (http://www.dgu.hr) and all Croatian secondary schools are invited to participate in the project.

Obtained preliminary results provide very clear recommendations related to the need for additional training, easier access to spatial data and interoperability, as well as for connecting the NSDI internet pages with the Teacher Training Portal and the National Distance Learning Portal.