Federal bureaucrats can see the polls like anyone else. The policies they're working on may not exist after May (or earlier), but whether much will change for their workplaces is another question.

Public servants were told this year that the bureaucracy wasn't broken, but that transformational change was on the way. Malcolm Turnbull set in motion a major review of the Australian Public Service, a decision that in time could prove the start of much-needed reform.

Should next year bring a new government and a report with a blueprint for meaningful change, 2018 and 2019 could turn out to be years when the bureaucracy radically altered course. If the Coalition is reelected and the review led by businessman David Thodey is a flop, the world will stay familiar for public servants.

That scenario looks unlikely right now. Mr Thodey appears determined for his review to leave its imprint. The public service's leaders – among them prime minister's department secretary Martin Parkinson and new public service commissioner Peter Woolcott – have framed reform as a response to the challenges faced by liberal democracy. In other words, they know the stakes are high. The proof could arrive when the review is expected to drop in mid-2019.

A new political wind might change life for bureaucrats next year under a Shorten government, but public servants will be used to it after the turmoil of 2018, starting with that obscure but potent part of the constitution called section 44.

It appeared to deliver a reprieve for bureaucrats at risk of having their jobs plucked from Canberra for the bush, when two of the Nationals' loudest advocates for decentralisation tripped up over their dual citizenship.

With Fiona Nash gone, and Barnaby Joyce ejected and later brought down by scandal, the policy hanging over the national capital seemed to fizz. The Coalition appears to have learnt the lessons of Mr Joyce's painful transplant moving Australia's pesticides authority from Canberra to his electorate.

The federal budget had little in the way of more relocations. A Coalition-dominated review softened Mr Joyce and former senator Nash's more zealous cries for decentralisation, saying any moves should not stop agencies from performing their work and must be a good fit for their new home towns. It pulled up short of recommending the government force agencies to relocate.

Yet more political turmoil, arriving when the Coalition's right wing took a battering ram to Mr Turnbull's door and destroyed his prime ministership, brought another pivot for the public service. Decentralisation emerged from the ashes elevated to its own ministry, taken by one of its more staunch advocates and deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie.

Given the government since August has decided to create new regional public service jobs without moving bureaucrats, the decentralisation project may have matured, posing less threat to the national capital. The Coalition isn't above some Canberra-bashing on the way, though.

Mr Turnbull's political demise brought another shift in the public service sands. Finance Minister Mathias Cormann took over the ministry overseeing the bureaucracy and immediately tried to reclaim lost territory in the debate over its use of contractors and consultants. Labor wants to lift the cap on agency staffing forcing officials to buy in private staff. Senator Cormann, and Human Services Minister Michael Keenan, have each rebuked Labor's pledges to rely less on contractors.

Much would change under a Labor government for public servants. It plans to reverse years of cuts by bringing more staff into the Department of Human Services in charge of Centrelink, and improve its service standards. While the party has railed against the use of consultants and contractors, what its policy would be in practice remains to be seen.

A hangover from the Abbott- and Turnbull-era of industrial conflict also remains. While staff at Home Affairs were granted a 4 per cent pay rise by the Fair Work Commission, they end 2018 the same way the last three years have ended – without a new agreement, now with the full bench of the commission in its eighth month of deliberation on every clause and sub clause.

The future of workplace bargaining for the public service also looks set to change, no matter who wins government in 2019. The champion of the hardline policy John Lloyd saw himself out of the role of Australian Public Service Commissioner in June. He'd faced months of pressure over his emails to his former colleagues at the Institute of Public Affairs. At the end of his tenure, an investigation found he breached a code of conduct by emailing the think tank a document detailing what he called "generous" provisions in the federal bureaucracy's enterprise agreements. Mr Lloyd's departure has raised hopes his successor, Mr Woolcott, will negotiate differently. Public servants and unions will find out as the next round of enterprise bargaining continues next year.

Long before he resigned, Mr Lloyd had promoted rules stopping public servants expressing their political views on social media. Bureaucrats can get in trouble for "liking" posts on Facebook or Twitter. A lingering question over the limits on their free speech may receive a decisive answer from the High Court next year, when its judges are expected to hear and decide on the federal government's case against an Immigration Department worker sacked over her politically-charged tweets. A decision in Michaela Banerji's favour could force the government to loosen its restrictions on public servants.

Few public servants would ever have had need to consider the intricacies of the Auditor-General Act, until in September an audit report investigating the value for money of the Hawkei protected vehicle was handed down with large sections greyed out, due to a certificate by Attorney-General Christian Porter. Along with Auditor-General Grant Hehir's strident defence of his ability to make a finding on whether or not the procurement did in fact achieve value for money and his independence, it opened a national security can of worms.

The request by Thales to suppress sections of the report looked set to create a precedent, with two agencies raising the prospect of further suppressions. One, from Home Affairs on the Cape Class patrol boats, didn't come to pass and another remains to be seen. A parliamentary inquiry into the issuing of the certificate is due to report back next year, and could recommend a change to the way these processes take place.

It became almost certain this year that all federal public servants will soon be under the jurisdiction of an anti-corruption commission, but what form it takes is still yet to be seen, with different models proposed by the government, the opposition and the crossbench.

Public servants may soon be able to watch their bosses in public hearings, find their offices raided by integrity commission staff, but the system may not be evenly applied to all.