You will need to talk to your system administrator, or whoever it was that sold you or provisioned to you the laptop. Operating systems don't just magically "change" from one version to another, nor do Linux OSes "split" into two versions (although I'm guessing the reason you see two instances of Linux is that you upgraded the kernel, so both the old and new versions of the kernel are present).
If you didn't have to enter a GRUB password before, and now you do, then it's possible that the government has remote admin access to the laptop and they decided to impose a password for whatever reason -- whether it's to lock you out, improve the security of the device, or any other reason. Again, to resolve this, you will need to contact them.
If your goal is to try and bypass the password prompt without actually knowing the password -- I would advise you not to do that. If you are indeed the legitimate owner or operator of this laptop, then the provisioning organization should be able to provide you with steps to successfully boot the system.