This document offers discussion, a detailed description, and recommendations for the meta-framework developed within the SPWS project (Skills Profiling Web Service) . This meta-framework gives a structure for skills frameworks which are intended to be to some extent interoperable with other skills frameworks dealing with similar skills or competencies. In order to achieve this interoperability, two sides of skills frameworks are distinguished: on the one hand a conceptual framework, for all stakeholders to agree on; and on the other hand any number of frameworks for teaching, learning, assessment, and practice in a particular context, which can be related to each other through their relationship with the common conceptual framework. Both sides are represented using the IMS RDCEO specification, and detailed examples are given of how this can be done in practice. The SPWS project has tested this meta-framework by creating a partial skills framework for the skills and competencies relevant to undergraduate medical education, including both some skills specific to medicine and some generic transferable ones. This has about 200 elements, and supports a skill-centred log book tool for medical students, implemented within the Bodington VLE.