The goal of NextGRID is to develop architectural components that will lead to the emergence of the Next Generation Grid. This will prepare the way for the broader use of Grid technologies and their widespread adoption by organisations and individuals from the business and public domains. This widespread use will be a significant step towards meeting the vision of ERA and the goals of the e-Europe Action Plan. We will achieve these goals by extending the Grid architecture in three phases:1. Meeting the needs of business users: by addressing security and economically viable business models;2. Enabling participation by the public: by addressing legal and privacy issues, and making the Grid more scalable and usable;3. Consolidating and standardising these enhancements and stimulating take-up. NextGRID regards these objectives as a community effort and will focus on inspiring, through specific innovations and technical leadership, key progress in open Grid standards. We intend to provide the key initiatives for success, but expect to encompass the much wider body of work needed to define, agree and implement the next generation Grid. NextGRID will last for three years, and consist of integrating activities on architecture, standards and business/operational issues, plus development activities on Grid foundation services and protocols, dynamic federation, user interactions and representative applications, and a coherent dissemination and outreach activity. The scope of the work will address the possible convergence between Grid and Web services, and between Grid and P2P architectures, as well as new aspects such as the Semantic Grid. The overall result of the project will be a collection of new architectural designs, key middleware components, application support mechanisms, know-how and standards that will underpin the Next Generation Grid. NextGRID will be a key step towards realising the vision of the Grid and making it as ubiquitous as the Web is today.